Tuesday, June 9, 2009

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The New ShopSavvy: Faster, Bigger, Stronger Top
The development house Big In Japan has just rolled out its 3.5 update to its ShopSavvy Android app. ShopSavvy is the useful app that allows you to use an Android phone’s camera to scan barcodes and get pricing information. More importantly, it allows you to compare prices of that item to prices on the web, where you’ll many times find a better deal. This new update which the team calls “Rodan” offers 1,000 new retailers and 750,000 new products, is better optimized for battery life and is much faster, I’m told. ShopSavvy, which was one of the original Google Android Challenge winners when it was still known as GoCart, launched with the Android platform last October and has been one of the most popular applications on the device since then. The company claims it now can compare over 20 million products at over 22,000 retailers. Here are the full list of enhancements the company is claiming with this release: * More than 1,000 additional participating retailers * More than 750,000 additional scannable products * Faster barcode scanning * Faster, more accurate product search * Faster load times * Faster animations * WiFi and GPS setting retention * Notification of whether or not an item is in stock or out of stock * Improved battery life * Optional registration * Option to search by title if product is not found * Google Product Search integration * Ability to visit retailer Web sites inside or outside ShopSavvy * Additional polish to user interface The company has yet to launch an iPhone version of ShopSavvy, a lot of that had to do with the iPhone’s current junky camera that can’t do things like auto-focus. But as we all learned yesterday, that’s about to change. And Big In Japan has been working on an iPhone version for some time. The concept of using a mobile device to scan barcodes is an interesting one. Others apps in this space have since risen up, and pretty much anyone make their own simple barcode scanner using the Android Scripting Environment . The other day we covered Googler Matt Cutts using a barcode scanner to scan books into the Google Book Search database, but a couple days later, he and some fellow Googlers actually came up with a way to do the same thing with the Android phone . You can find the new version of ShopSavvy in the Android Market, or download it directly here . CrunchBase Information ShopSavvy Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Demo: FireFox 3.5 Treats Videos Like Web Pages. Why Can't Flash Do That? Top
Mike Beltzner, the director of Firefox, was in New York City today and dropped by my office to talk about Firefox 3.5 , which is now officially a “preview” version (a very stable beta). Firefox 3.5 is supposedly much faster than earlier versions, which is always a good thing . Honestly, the nanosecond speed differences between most of today’s latest browsers is becoming hard to detect. Three features of Firefox 3.5 which stand out for me are: 1) its embrace of open-source video standards, 2) its geo-location capabilities , and 3) support for downloadable fonts and other graphic tricks. In the video above, Beltzner demos some of the new video and graphics capabilities of Firefox 3.5. Built into the browser is a video player based on the open-source video formats Ogg Vorbis and Theora. The video player supports HTML5, which means that links and other interactive elements can easily be placed inside videos. The demo page Beltzner shows in the video can be found here (but the effects only work if you are looking at it in Firefox 3.5). Being able to treat the content inside videos like Web pages opens up a whole new world of possibilities for Web video. Already, DailyMotion offers all of its videos in the Ogg Theora format. If this takes off, Flash video could be come history. Look closely at what Beltzner is showing off in the video, because you can’t do any of that with Flash. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Google Releases A Search App That You Can Tweet From, But Can't Search Twitter From Top
A hot area of development right now is in the field of desktop Twitter clients. Some like Tweetie , are Twitter-only, while others like Seesmic Desktop , handle a few different services with a focus on Twitter. The area is apparently so hot that Google is now even getting involved . While technically, its Google Quick Search Box (QSB) is a Mac desktop application meant to make searching the web and your desktop a breeze, you’ll notice that it comes with exactly one additional account type (beyond Google) built in: Twitter. Yes, aside from typing queries into the QSB and getting results, you can also use it as a Twitter status updater. Google isn’t the first of the big boys to get involved with Twitter on the desktop side of things, Yahoo recently launched Sideline , which is a much more full-fledged client. Unfortunately, QSB doesn’t allow you to see your Twitter follower stream, it just allows you to update your status right now. There is a Quick Search Box built-in to the Windows version of Google Desktop as well, but to the best of my knowledge, it doesn’t promote this Twitter functionality in the same way, if it offers it at all. Actually tweeting from QSB it is a bit tricky at first, so I’ll copy Google’s directions below: The secret of creating a “text” item : Text items are queries that start with a space (e.g. hit the space bar and then start typing). To tweet, activate the QSB, hit the space bar (creating a text item), and type in the text you want to tweet - remember Twitter has a 140 character limit! The selected result should be a “text” item. Hit the tab key to show the available actions on the item. Select the “Send Twitter Status” action for the account you wish to tweet with and hit the return key. Pivoting on the search result : If the text item thing confuses you, just pull up the QSB, type your query, and pivot (hit tab) on the search result. Select the “Send Twitter Status” action for the account you wish to tweet with and hit the return key. It’s a pretty quick way to tweet something, actually. And it does a very nice job for searches as well, obviously. But one thing it doesn’t do that would make perfect sense, is search Twitter. Come on Google, get on that. What I want to know is, does anyone still really believe that Google has no interest in Twitter ? As many commenters are noting, this can basically replace Quicksilver for the Mac , and shares one of the same developers . CrunchBase Information Google Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
When It Comes To Getting Local Content On Your Phone, The Mobile Browser Is Still King Top
Despite the avalanche of mobile apps that let people access local information, the mobile browser is still the king when it comes to finding out what’s going on in your city or neighborhood. People across the board are using their mobile phones to look up local info. ComScore reported today that the number of people in the U.S. who sought local content on mobile devices grew 51 percent from March 2008 to March 2009. The report also shows that the mobile browser is the most popular way consumers find local information, with 20.7 million browser users in March 2009, up 34 percent versus a year ago. Only about half as many people (11.3 million) use downloaded apps to find local data. But downloaded apps did exhibit the strongest growth, up 83 percent versus a year ago. I’m sure the growth of the iPhone had something to do with that. What’s interesting is that despite the popularity of local content apps like those from Yelp and CitySearch, apps still remain the least popular method for mobile access of local information, with 11.3 million users in March. ComScore says that slightly more consumers use SMS for obtaining local information (11.7 million users) than apps, but the browser is still by far the most popular way for consumers to find info on local restaurants, bars, businesses and more. Drilling down into the local content categories, the number of people accessing online directories has seen the greatest increase during the past year (73 %), followed by restaurants (70 %), maps (63 %) and movies (60%). (Photo credit: Flickr/ kballard ). Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Stealth Startup Udorse Raises $500k From Founders Fund Top
Udorse , a New York-based startup currently in stealth, has raised a $500,000 round of seed funding from Founders Fund . Founders Fund’s Peter Thiel will be serving on the company’s board of directors. At this point we know very little about the startup. It was founded by Trevor Austin and Geoffrey Lewis (pictured below), both of whom were previously employed at Thiel’s hedge fund Clarium Capital. The company plans to launch its service in private beta some time this summer. As for what it actually plans to do, Lewis provided us with the following (admittedly vague) description: “We believe that recent trends are more than fads, and that they demand a fundamentally new way for users to connect with brands across platforms.” That’s not much to go on, but it sounds like Udorse will somehow play on the growing interaction between users and brands on Twitter and Facebook (given the name, users will probably be somehow endorsing their favorite brands). Whether or not Udorse is an entirely new service or one that builds on these existing platforms remains to be seen. We’ll be keeping an eye out for these guys over the next few months. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
You Have Three Days To Pick Your Facebook Vanity URL. Choose Wisely, Or You're Screwed. Top
What are you doing this Friday night? Going to a bar with friends? Going to a movie? Wrong. If you’re a real web addict you’ll be sitting at your computer waiting for the clock to strike 12:01 AM Eastern Time. That’s when Facebook’s new vanity URLs are going to go live, and the landrush to get one will begin. And it’s going to be a landrush because it’s a first-come, first-serve basis, as Facebook writes today . It looks like Facebook will give you a bunch of options based on your real name, but you can also pick your own vanity name. But there are some rules: Facebook usernames will be available in basic text forms, and you can only choose a single username for your profile and for each of the Pages that you administer. Your username must be at least five characters in length and only include alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9), or a period or full stop (”.”). While usernames are currently available only for Romanized text, we’re looking at how we might support non-Romanized characters in the future. We first talked about Facebook getting serious about vanity URLs back in March . It’s been clear for a while that people prefer them rather than having the current profile.php?id=500065899 nonsense. But up until now, only famous public profiles have been able to get one. Come 12:01 AM on Saturday, they’ll be open to all. So choose wisely when you pick a name — or it could well end up like that tattoo you regret later in your life if you pick something like “mileycyrusfanforever.” Facebook notes this in their own way: Think carefully about the username you choose. Once it’s been selected, you won’t be able to change or transfer it. If you signed up for a Facebook Page after May 31 or a user profile after today at 3 p.m. EDT, you may not be able to sign up for a username immediately because of steps we’ve taken to prevent abuse or “squatting” on names. While Facebook had been playing around with the idea of charging users to get these vanity URLs, they will offer them for free. Facebook is also asking people with a trademarked or protected name to email them here to avoid the obvious issues. You can watch the countdown to the feature live here . CrunchBase Information Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Pure Digital: Thanks For The $1.3 Million Check! How Do I Cash It? Top
So here I am this morning opening a pile of mail - schwag from companies, bills, checks for Heather, payroll stuff, the usual. I rip all the envelopes open and then dig in. And I look down and see this check for $1.3 million and change. Trust me, there’s nothing quite like opening up a letter addressed to you and finding a check inside for $1,334,261.05. First thought: woohoo! Second thought: why? Third thought: oh, it’s not made out to me. Of course. Fourth thought: oh crap, it’s addressed to me but the wrong name, did I just commit a felony by opening it without even paying attention (my lawyer is getting back to me on that, meanwhile, I’m taking a quick vacation in Mexico)? The check is from Pure Digital Technologies, the company that Cisco recently acquired for $590 million (Pure Digital makes the Flip camera). A letter accompanying the check says that the money represents “net proceeds from the cash out of your stock options.” So what happened? Pure Digital says the person it was supposed to be sent to used to live in my house a long time ago. They also asked if I could send it back, and assured me they put a stop payment on it. It’s now safely in the mail to them, I promise. But it does provide a nice bookend to the story . And frankly, I think I deserve at least a finder’s fee for returning this so promptly. Pure Digital wasn’t amused by that request. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Mac Chrome Lead Rationalizes Early Release, Needs Your Help Top
For the past several months, everyone has been bitching about the lack of availability of Chrome on the Mac. So Google did something about it, and formally released a developer build to the public, making sure to note that it wasn’t really ready for prime-time. Nevertheless, a ton of people downloaded it and then started bitching that it wasn’t ready for prime-time. So today, the lead engineer on Chrome for the Mac took some time to respond to the critics. “What was the point of releasing at this stage, you might ask? It’s clearly not finished. Clearly. It’s missing a large number of features, some half implemented, others not at all. Why even bother? Doesn’t it just make us look bad?,” Mike Pinkerton (also the man who leads the Camino browser development team for Mozilla) writes today . His answer is basically that they don’t care how it makes them look to release an unfinished product. Part of the development cycle of open source software is to get it in the hands of outside developers and have them help in completing the product. Makes sense to me. But Pinkerton goes on to further quote the famous essay “ The Cathedral and the Bazaar ” by Eric Raymond: “When you start community-building, what you need to be able to present is a plausible promise. Your program doesn’t have to work particularly well. It can be crude, buggy, incomplete, and poorly documented. What it must not fail to do is (a) run, and (b) convince potential co-developers that it can be evolved into something really neat in the foreseeable future.” And he then follows that with another three paragraphs of justifications. But the post probably could have been two paragraphs — if not shorter. Don’t listen to the haters Mac Chrome team, you’re doing a good job. Yes, it’s taking you a long time, but at least we know when it’s done, it should be a solid product . Hopefully more solid than Safari 4, which Apple officially released yesterday and has been giving myself and quite a few others , fits. CrunchBase Information Google Chrome Apple Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
The Man With The Golden iPhone: Spymaster Going Mobile Top
By now you either are addicted to Spymaster , or absolutely can’t stand it. The viral Twitter-based game in which you do spy-like things such as “assassinate” your followers is a great time-waster . But it’s also drawn some criticism as being “spammy.” That isn’t stopping the team from pushing the game forward — first, by finally opening it up to everyone today, and second with an upcoming iPhone app. The iPhone app, which we’ve obtained some mock-ups of, should be out “in the next few weeks,” co-founder Eston Bond tells us. Those familiar with the game should feel right at home based on these pictures. The “Strategy” and “Tactics” menu options along the bottom are just ways to better organize features, we’re told. The creators are also working fast to get a bunch of new features in the game. The iPhone version will be available for free. The rapid growth of Spymaster on Twitter — it was a top trending topic for several days after it launched — has already spawned a series of similar viral games. As many have been quick to point out, this is similar to what happened early in the life of Facebook’s Platform as well. But Spymaster was able to do this based on an invite-only system (something which also caused some controversy ), now with it open to the public and going mobile, we could be in for a second wave of Spymaster fury. Just as with the aforementioned Facebook Platform, Twitter is going to sooner or later own up to the fact that it is now a platform and must take measures to allay concerns that viral applications will take over the network. Plenty of people have told me that they don’t want to see Spymaster messages in their tweet stream, but would rather not unfollow people who they still consider to be friends. If there was just a way to filter out those message — and yes, some third party Twitter apps have a way, but this needs to be built into Twitter eventually — then everyone can continue to go about their business. I realize filters may slightly muck-up the “ keep it simple ” mentality, but Twitter is getting too big, we need it. Games like Spymaster that are fun for some but a burden for others shouldn’t suffer because Twitter has never been good at the whole “new feature” thing. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Google Takes Another Swipe At Microsoft. Enterprise Apps Now Sync With Outlook. Top
Google’s small but growing enterprise app business is now going for Microsoft’s jugular. At a press conference today (see Mike’s real-time notes ), Google announced a new plug-in that will sync Google’s enterprise versions of Gmail, contacts, and calendar with Microsoft’s Outlook. In the enterprise, Outlook is still king and not everyone is ready to switch just yet to browser-based email, calendars and contact management. So employees can continue to use Outlook if that is what they are comfortable with, and Google Apps will run on the backend. Google is claiming that its enterprise apps cost less than half of Microsoft Exchange (the server software that is paired with Outlook, where all the money is). The new syncing tool, Google App Sync, works only on Windows at this point and is only available for (paying) enterprise customers. Steve Ballmer is not going to be happy about this. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Google Apps Press Event: The Riveting Real Time Notes (Use Google Apps With Outlook!) Top
Google has gathered tech press at the Clift hotel for a press event around Google Apps. At the ridiculous time of 9:30 in the morning. Meaning (1) I had to get up at 7 to get ready and battle traffic, and (2) I’m therefore not in a very good mood. Nothing like talking enterprise stuff at the crack of dawn. With that in mind, here are my real time notes. There are definitely some new customer and product announcements. One thing Google isn’t announcing yet is any removal of the beta logos from Google Apps services. Background: Google Apps, a suite of productivity services first launched in 2006 , and has evolved from there. Today more than 1 million businesses use Google apps and “hundreds of millions of dollars” is generated in revenue. Real Time Notes: Dave Girouard , President Google Enterprise, says that we’re in an economic downturn, but that great companies thrive in downturns. He’s talking about the history of Google Apps, which launched in 2004 with Gmail (see image below). Premier Edition launched in 2007 and Postini was acquired later that year. 500,000 businesses were announced in 2008 and Genentech deployed on Google Apps. The chart also shows the headcount dedicated to enterprise efforts at Google, rising from zero in 2004 to over 1,000 today. New stats Dave is announcing today: Google has more than 1.75 million businesses and 15 million users. More than 4,000 TB of mail is managed for Google Apps customers. Dave says companies move to Google for three reasons: lower cost, constant innovation, happy end users. Google Apps costs companies $8.47 per user per month (Forrester). Microsoft Exchange online is $20.32. He’s also talking about reliability and uptime and the recently launched Google Dashboard . He says that Google is focused on transparency on any issues. And that Google is getting better at managing enterprise customers so that they have less downtime. New Product: Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook - “Let users choose their interface: a plug-in that syncs Outlook with Apps just like Outlook natively syncs with Exchange.” See image below. Product Manager Chris Vander Mey, Senior Product Manager for enterprise, is talking about the new sync product. Users need to move from Exchange to Google seemelessly, he says. Calendar, contacts, etc. The product will launch this afternoon. This effectively lets Google Apps users use Outlook as the interface to Google Apps. For users who don’t want to only use the browser to access email, calendar, contacts, etc., this is an awesome feature. Google Apps Sync works only with Windows machines for now. No Entourage on the Mac. Dave fielded a question about Google Wave and how it might integrate with Google Apps. Dave says “it’s gonna get into Enterprise’s hands as fast as we can.” He says traditionally products are baked on the user side and then moved to enterprise, but, Dave says, he wants to move things along more quickly. If you are an individual user who wants to use this syncing product, you have to sign up for Google Apps Premier. You can then sync Gmail, Google Calendar and Contacts with Outlook. This is only Google Apps premier, so the free product won’t work. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Meebo Community IM Tears Down Walls, Goes Web-Wide Top
Over the last year or so, having online chat integrated into a website has quickly moved from “nifty” to “the norm”. The feature first caught on with Facebook , and has since made its way to a variety of other sites, including MySpace and Orkut. But most publishers and social networks don’t really have the resources to build their own chat clients, which can frustrate users that have become accustomed to the feature. Meebo , the popular chat startup, has come a long way in helping solve this problem. The company has spent the last year building up Community IM, a product that allows sites to quickly integrate a full-featured browser-based chat client in a matter of days. Meebo has signed 75 partner sites and is currently live on 32 of them, with deployment quickly ramping up. Today, Community IM is getting a major upgrade, and it’s one that represents a major shift in the way the service can be used, beginning to transition Community IM from a pure chat product to a powerful sharing service. Before now, users on a site with Community IM were restricted to chatting with friends on that site’s social graph — if I was on myYearbook, I could only chat with my myYearbook buddies. Starting today, users on some partner sites will be prompted by a small message alongside the chat bar that invites them to connect with their other friends using their Meebo account. This means that users will be able to chat with friends on any chat network Meebo supports, which includes AIM, Facebook, and Gtalk. They’ll also be able to tap into the social graphs of other Community IM partner sites that they’re a part of — if I was on cafemom, I could log in with my Meebo account and see if any of my friends from my myYearbook account were online. The other major new addition to Community IM is a very intuitive sharing feature. Aftering hit the new ‘Share’ button at the bottom left hand corner of the chat bar, the browser will dim slightly, save for your chat buddy list and icons for Facebook, Twitter, and Email at the top of the screen. Clicking on any of your buddies will immediately send them a link to the site you’re currently on (no copy/paste required). Likewise, clicking on the Facebook, Twitter, or Email icons will let you share the page via any of these services in a matter of seconds. Sharing isn’t exactly a unique feature, but it’s executed very well here — you can send a link to a friend in only two mouse clicks. Combined with the inter-network chat also launching today, this new sharing feature is going to be driving quite a bit of traffic for Meebo’s partner sites, though it comes with a bit of a tradeoff. Users will now be swapping links to partner sites other than the one their friends are currently looking at (I might send a link for Cafemom to one of my friends currently browsing Flixster), which could occasionally drive traffic away from a partner site. That said, Meebo believes that this will generally boost traffic for all partners involved, and says that all of its partners knew this was coming and are eager for it. The upgraded Community IM is being deployed to CafeMom and SparkPeople today, and the new chat bar will soon begin rolling it out to existing partners as well (Meebo says that all partners will eventually make the switch). Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Can Su.pr Short Links Save StumbleUpon? (250 Private Beta Invites) Top
Any self-respecting Website these days has its own URL shortening service for easy syndication of links across Twitter, Facebook and other status streams. There are services such as bit.ly and TinyURL. Digg has its controversial Diggbar (which helped lift unique visitors by 20 percent). Hell, even we use our own custom short URL domain (tcrn.ch) via Awe.sm . Now, StumbleUpon, which was recently freed from eBay’s clutches , is rolling out its own URL shortening service, Su.pr . It is in closed beta, but we have 250 invites for the first TechCrunch readers to enter the promotional code: suprtc We first caught wind of Su.pr back in March when StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp appropriately enough Tweeted about it. Su.pr lets you shorten a URL and share it across Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon. What’s more, it gives you a dashboard to help you keep track of how many times your su.pr links have been shared, across which services. You can see how many times each link has been clicked on and retweeted (along with the number of followers for each retweeter). It also lets you schedule shared links across those services for any time you want. The analytics are key. They are similar to what you’d find using bit.ly, except that Su.pr is plugged into Stumbleupon, which gives each link an extra distribution push. Each link can then be voted upon by the StumbleUpon community, and if it becomes popular, it can take on a new life. For StumbleUpon, it is a way to seed the service with links people are already pushing out to their real-time streams. StumbleUpon links take longer to gain momentum, so one benefit is that it could extend the life of good links. Camp calls them “Su.pr links” because they take wrap the pages with a toolbar up top that entices people to vote the page up or down and Stumble to another page. “We are trying to give people a stumble experience through syndicating links,” he explains. Right now, however, Su.pr is using frames like the Diggbar, instead of redirecting straight to the underlying page. However, Camp says by the time Su.pr launches in public, websites will have the option to register with the service and host the toolbar themselves on their own URL (using a line of Javascript). His team is also developing custom short URLs for large sites which can tap into the same analytics backend (and further help push more content into StumbleUpon). There is definitely a need for tools like these because Website publishers want to know not just what is happening on their sites, but what is happening to their links across the Web. But will it be enough to reignite interest in Stumbleupon, which languished under eBay’s ownership? Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Round-up: Every iPhone 3G S Compatible Accessory Ever. Top
When Apple announced the iPhone 3G S yesterday, some folks were shocked — or disappointed, even — that the new one was a spitting image of the last one. Width, height, depth - besides being 2 whole grams heavier, the physical specs were a perfect match. We've been reminded of this fact roughly 300 times this morning, as every case manufacturer and battery-pack maker from here to Hong Kong writes in to "announce compatibility with the iPhone 3G S". We get it, guys. Nothing changed, so your case still fits. That said, it got us to thinking: what other accessories from the last generation iPhone will still work with this upcoming one? So, we compiled a list. It's not exhaustive, of course - but it covers all of the ones you're most likely worried about.
 
Cisco: By 2013 Video Will Be 90 Percent Of All Consumer IP Traffic And 64 Percent of Mobile Top
By 2013, annual global IP traffic will reach two-thirds of a zettabyte , according to a new forecast of IP traffic issued by Cisco today. What is a zettabyte? It is a trillion gigabytes, dummy. (I had to look that up too). And that number represents more than a fivefold increase in IP traffic from today. (See the forecast in the tables below). What is driving this growth is video. Cisco forecasts that 90 percent of consumer IP traffic (which makes up the majority of total IP traffic) will be video in 2013. Cisco also predicts that mobile data traffic will also be overtaken by video, reaching 64 percent of total mobile IP traffic by 2013. Part of this might be wishful thinking on Cisco’s part, which needs broadband usage growth to continue apace in order to sell its networking gear. But part of it is also the fact that these numbers are based on the percentage of bits traveling over those broadband pipes, and it doesn’t take a lot of fat video files to fill those up. Cisco is a big believer in the growth of mobile video, expecting it to grow from 33 petabytes a month in 2008 to 2,184 petabytes (or 2 exabytes) a month in 2013, which represents a 131 percent compound annual growth rate. (No wonder it bought the maker of the Flip video camera). As impressive as those numbers sound, at that point, mobile data will only make up 4 percent of total IP traffic. (Good thing Apple finally decided to get with the program and add video to its upcoming iPhone 3GS). In the chart below, you can see how big a role Cisco expects video to play in mobile data traffic. Video is the green part of the bar graphs. Standalone data (dark blue) is also expected to grow quickly. The devices expected to drive this 131 percent annual growth in mobile data are not so much current 3G mobile handsets, but next-gen “3.5G and above” (in green), as well as laptops and other portable computers (in orange). By 2013, I bet it will be pretty hard to tell the difference between those two segments. Until then, Cisco is offering free apps for the iPhone and Blackberry that lets you check your network speed on the go. Table 1. Global IP Traffic, 2008-2013 IP Traffic, 2008-2013 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 CAGR 2008-2013 By Type (PB per month) Internet 8,140 11,716 16,701 23,843 31,839 40,428 38% Non-Internet IP 2,001 3,031 4,569 6,647 9,394 12,975 45% Mobile Data 33 85 207 482 1,076 2,184 131% By Segment (PB per month) Consumer 7,037 10,488 15,465 22,768 31,211 40,571 42% Business 3,103 4,258 5,805 7,722 10,022 12,833 32% Mobile
 
Fotonauts Emerges From Its Cocoon As Interactive, Web-Based Fotopedia Top
We’ve been eagerly awaiting the public beta launch of Fotonauts’ encyclopedia for photos, Fotopedia. TechCrunch Editor Erick Schonfeld reviewed the preview of Fotopedia that was released a few weeks ago. A startup that debuted at TechCrunch50 last year, Fotonauts turns your photo albums into collaborative Web pages about different topics and subjects. Fotonauts, which was in private beta and will officially be known now as Fotopedia, is a desktop photo client which helps you tag, organize, and share your photos in a live feed. The brainchild of Jean-Marie Hullot, former CTO of NeXT Software and Apple's Application Division, Fotopedia was born when Hullot was helping his children with reports for school. He was using Wikipedia for background information but couldn’t find a comprehensive site that provided relevant photos to Wikipedia entries. Thus the idea for Fotonauts was born and entered private beta last year. But Hullot and his business partner, Gilles Samoun, wanted to create a web-facing product, which will serve as a complete photo encyclopedia, alongside the desktop client that focused more on the encyclopedia part of the concept. Fotopedia is supposed to be a cross between Flickr and Wikipedia, serving as an archive of "images for humanity.” The beta launch of Fotopedia lets you to turn any photo album from your Fotopedia desktop client into a Web page entry on Fotopedia, complete with tags, associated Wikipedia entry, and Google Map information where available. You can also add relevant photos from other Fotopedia albums and from photos licensed under creative commons on Flickr. And you can post your album on Twitter, Flickr and Facebook. Web albums can also be built collaboratively. Photographers can add photos and other data on specific places and topics, all tagged and organized by Fotonauts. And as in the private beta version, the photos in Fotonauts are synchronized with existing photo services like Flickr and Picasa. A new feature that was added lets you choose if you want your album be presented for consideration for the Fotopedia photo encyclopedia, under the corresponding index or title which you file it under. So if you create an album from a trip to Bali, you can be a contributor by submitting the entire album or certain photographs to be considered for the Fotopedia entry on the encyclopedia entry for Bali. On the Fotopedia web site, anyone can access albums for a variety of topics, places, people and more. There are over 150,000 high-quality photos already, organized into 4,501 "articles." Each article is a Web slide show, along with the associated Wikipedia entry and Google Map. Each photo contains a good amount of metadata making it search-engine friendly. The encyclopedia tab on the site lets you access a indexed archive of photo albums on topics like geography, history, art and more. It’s important to note that in order to be a contributor to an encyclopedia entry, you need to have downloaded the desktop client. But users who don’t have the Fotopedia desktop client can also use the “community” tab on the site, to view albums, vote for photos to be included in encyclopedia entries, comment, and follow users, pages or albums. A photo officially enters the photo encyclopedia by reaching 5 positive votes. Users are allowed 50 votes every day to decide which photos make it and which ones don’t. Users can also create widgets of albums to embed on on blogs, web sites and social networks. Users can pick single photos or complete albums to add to a widget. Here’s an example of an embedded widget for the Bali entry: Bali on Fotopedia Below are two screenshots, first of the desktop client, and second of the Website. Both are very similar, except the desktop client has more features, including a photo stream on the right-hand columns of all the people and albums you are following. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
comScore Study: Bing Is Off To A Very Good Start Top
Internet audience measurement company comScore has released a preliminary study of the performance of Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing , during the first week of its public launch. The study confirms earlier reports that Bing had a very good start , even overtaking Yahoo as the No. 2 search engine at some point according to web analytics firm StatCounter (although that apparently lasted only a day ). According to comScore, Microsoft Sites increased its average daily penetration among searchers in the United Stated from 13.8% during the period of May 26-30 to 15.5% during the period of June 2-6, 2009, an indication that the search engine is reaching more people than before. Microsoft's share of search engine results pages (SERPs) in the U.S., increased from 9.1% to 11.1% during the same time frame. Like many people, I’m trying out Bing for a month or so to see how well it stacks up against other search engines (primarily compared to Google, which has been my default search engine for many years). So far, I find the experience generally very pleasing and the search results to live up to the hype. It remains to be seen if I, and the many others out there who are taking Bing for a test-drive following the launch buzz, keep on using it when the momentum fades away. But boy is it good to have some real competition in search going, even if just for a short while. To be continued. CrunchBase Information Bing Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Nokia To Pre-load Qik On New Handsets Top
With all of the collaboration going on between Qik and Nokia over the past few months, it seemed like it wouldn’t be too long before Nokia went ahead and put the live mobile video broadcasting service onto handsets right out of the box. Sure, enough: Beginning with this morning’s release of the North American N97, Qik will come preloaded onto all Nokia S60-based phones. Read the rest of this post >> Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Irish Startup Reboots Microsoft Software Licensing and Protection Services Unit Top
Dublin-based InishTech debuts today as a new startup relaunching Microsoft Software Licensing and Protection (SLP) Services, a business unit Redmond booted back in October 2007 following its acquisition of the company Secured Dimensions in January of the same year. At the end of September 2008, Microsoft stopped accepting new SLPS customers, which we got confirmation of when we researched and reported the quiet shut-down. SLP Services was a software licensing suite that provides developers with the ability to protect code, license software, create license versions, and track performance and profitability of products created with .NET. For more information, you can watch this non-embeddable video . InishTech, founded through collaboration between Microsoft IP Ventures, Enterprise Ireland and local entrepreneurs Aidan Gallagher, John O’Sullivan and David Smyth, will now take on responsibility for SLP Services’ existing customer base and will “continue to provide, expand and grow the service to independent software vendors (ISVs) and developers around the world”. Microsoft will license its IP to InishTech and maintain a minority interest in the startup. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Cc:Betty Raises $1.5 Million For Email Organization Assistant Top
Cc:Betty, a free service that helps organize group email threads, today has secured $1.5 million in seed led by Venrock with investors Seraph Group and Hillsven participating. The company was incubated in Venrock’s offices and officially launched at DEMO in March. Founded in 2008 by Michael Cerda, Cc:Betty is a service that routes, parses, and organizes email conversations in a simple at-a-glance dashboard so you never have to scour your inbox to find the bits and pieces of a long thread. If you cc “betty@ccbetty.com” on any email, "she" will create a mailspace, which is a webpage, for your entire email thread and will divide important things such as dates, times, people, places, and files and will format them all in one place. Cc:Betty will track messages with up to 100 recipients and can organize emails with up to 20 MB in size, including attachments. Recently, Cc:Betty upgraded its service with several new features, including the ability to see maps, images and documents as large thumbnails in email threads, and a list of people in an email conversation. You can also filter content of the thread by participant. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Compete: Facebook US Traffic Nearing Google, Yahoo Top
Web analytics firm Compete has released its data for the month of May, and as Justin Smith over at InsideFacebook has already pointed out , US traffic to Facebook.com has increased by nearly 8% to 82.9 million unique visitors last month, with Facebook Connect sites generating an additional 65 million uniques. That means that, according to Compete, a total of 113 million people in the U.S. interacted with the Facebook service. The data also shows MySpace is ( still ) steadily decreasing compared to the beginning of the year, while Twitter growth seems to have flattened all of the sudden. While it is interesting to see how the hot social networks stack up in terms of traffic, I thought I’d also take a look at how well Facebook is doing compared to other Web giants like Google.com, Yahoo.com and MSN.com. To my surprise, Facebook appears to have become a real challenger to these Internet juggernauts, who are relatively old compared to the social network that started out in 2004 as a university student-only service and only really opened up to the public in September 2006. Evidently. this is only one way to look at things. First, Compete does not always provide spot-on traffic estimates ( data from comScore suggested Facebook had yet to surpass MySpace in US traffic back in March) and second it’s hardly fair to compare these websites as they all serve different purposes and audiences. But the picture painted here is that Facebook has unmistakingly grown up to become one of the most popular Internet destinations on the planet, both in terms of registered users (well beyond 200 million at this point) and in terms of received traffic. And we’re still talking about a privately-held (albeit massively funded) company that has come this far. No wonder its valuation is surging . Then there’s our model of the true value of social networks , which gave Facebook a clear lead as well. For comparison, Compete pegs Google to have received a total of 145.5 million unique visitors in May, ahead of Yahoo (135.5 million) and MSN.com (97.5 million), which means Facebook has already overtaken the MSN website and is nearing the former two. It’s important to note that all four sites show a significant increase in U.S. traffic since the beginning of this year, but Facebook is definitely on the steepest growth curve here. In January 2009, total traffic to Facebook was somewhere around 68.5 million uniques, which means the May number of 113 million represents a 61% jump, mostly thanks to the successful spread of the Facebook Connect service. If these trends persist, expect Facebook to come out on top of the Compete charts well before the year ends. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
YouTube Video Streams Top 1.2 Billion/Day Top
We’ve been hearing for some time (starting with an ex-Youtube employee) that the number of video streams per day reported by Comscore, Nielsen and other metrics services way under-report on Youtube’s total video streams. It’s hard to compare apples to apples, though. Recent Comscore data says Google/YouTube streams just under 7 billion videos per month in the U.S., up from around 5 billion/month late last year . That’s about 225 million streams a day, which still puts them well above all the next major competitors (MySpace, Hulu, Yahoo, Viacom, Microsoft, etc.). Nielsen says Google/YouTube streams 5.5 billion videos/month in the U.S. But the real number of streams/day, we’ve now confirmed with a source at Google, is above 1.2 billion/day worldwide. That matches what we’ve heard from other sources. That pretty much means everyone on the Internet , on average, is watching one YouTube video per day. Google hasn’t commented on this in the past, and we can’t figure out exactly why. It may have to do with ongoing litigation and the desire to keep exact numbers quiet. Or it may be that they don’t necessarily want analysts to have deep insight into YouTube’s true cost structure. We’ve spoken to Comscore about this casually in the past, and they’ve noted that their estimates are based on available data, and that data doesn’t involve direct access to YouTube servers. Some companies choose to give Comscore deep access, others don’t. The data quality suffers accordingly. But one thing is clear. Comscore thinks the total online video space is around 17 billion monthly streams in the U.S. We now know that YouTube alone serves that many video streams every fifteen days or so worldwide. Time to revise those numbers up - if YouTube has 40% of the online market share for video like Comscore says (it may actually be much higher market share, another reason Google may not want this data out there), that means the total number of video streams on the Internet is approaching 80 billion/month, a heady number. We’ve approached MySpace and Hulu, the no. 2 and no. 3 online video services, for their exact streaming numbers. So far, no response. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Launch On TechCrunch, Get Bought By Google Top
I still love the story of Writely , a product we wrote about way back in 2005 when TechCrunch was just a little tike. The company got a lot of attention as one of the first Ajax-powered “online Word” products. An acquisition by Google came just a few months later, and Writely formed the foundation for what is now Google Docs. Cofounder Sam Schillace is now an engineering director at Google. He was profiled by the Wall Street Journal today: “Serial entrepreneur Sam Schillace had been writing software professionally for 16 years when one of his ideas caught Google Inc.’s attention. Within seven months, Mr. Schillace had sold his online word-processing program to the search-engine giant, where it spawned Google Docs. Now, he oversees engineering for Google products including Gmail, Picasa and Reader. Mr. Schillace spoke with reporter Elizabeth Garone; edited excerpts follow.” He also says in the interview: “TechCrunch [then a tech-review Web site, now a network of tech sites] and then Google found us as we were testing Writely live. We were almost immediately in the middle of a press and investor/acquirer storm.” Of course Writely would have done well and been acquired anyway. But we love that he remembers the small part we played in launching the service. If you’ve got an awesome idea baking, make sure we hear about it first. And the timing for TechCrunch50 , coming up in September, may just be perfect for you. We want to put you in the middle of a “press and investor/acquirer storm,” too. And for people who are thinking of starting a company of their own, Sam has some advice for you: “Never start a company just to start it. You start a company because you have an idea that you think will be great for some customer — and great ideas are always worth doing, even in a tough market. It’s also the case that many big companies are started during downturns and benefit from the added focus and discipline that’s necessary. So it might actually be the best time to start a company, if it’s the right idea and it’s done well.” Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Songkick Aims To Make A Database Of Every Concert Ever — And It's Well On Its Way Top
When Songkick was born in 2007 , it had an interesting goal: To perfect concert recommendation. Plenty of services do music recommendation, but the idea of recommending concerts you might like based on things like music you’re interested in and you location, was an interesting one. Now, with a few others in the space, including the similarly named Livekick , Songkick is embarking on a new tiny challenge: To create a giant database of every concert ever performed by every band , and to make the entire experience more social. To be clear, Songkick is still very much focusing on concert recommendation, but its site is now much deeper than that. Beginning today, you will be able to enter in the name of a band and a city in which you’ve seen a show you’ve seen in the past, and Songkick will scan its databases for that show. If it’s there — and there’s a pretty good chance it is, given that the site already has 1 million concerts in its database — you can click on the “I was there” button, and it will be added to your Songkick profile. Each of these concerts has its own Songkick profile page, that acts as a wiki of sorts. Any user can add photos from that show, ticket stubs, set lists, write a review of the show and a host of other things. And if a show isn’t there, you can add it. That’s a key part to all of this: Songkick wants to have every concert ever performed in its database, and it’s going to need its users to help make that possible. It’s done a huge chunk of the work with a million shows going back to a Bob Dylan show at the home of Karen Wallace in May 1960, but there is more to be done. The overall idea is to extend the experience of going to a concert beyond the actual show. And to make it more social. Maybe you’ll see that you’ve been to a bunch of the same shows as someone else, and you’ll add them as a friend on Songkick, and you’ll probably run into them in another show. More importantly for the social aspect on the site, Songkick now allows you to track not only bands and venues, but people as well. So if you find someone with similar tastes in music or a friend, you can be alerted when they say they’re going to go to a show. It might also be interesting to track people of influence like music journalists or executives using the site, Songkick co-founder Ian Hogarth tells us. Obviously, as is the case with any social site these days, Songkick information can be sent out to Twitter and Facebook. And while Songkick doesn’t yet integrate with something like Facebook Connect to port your social graph over, Hogarth envisions something like that happening in short order. Though he warns that you probably won’t want to track everyone you’re friends with on Facebook because Songkick is also about personal music preferences — which is a nice way of saying that a lot of your friends probably have crap music tastes. This is something I know to be true. Still, the giant concert database is the most interesting element of this update. Hogarth at one point explained it as being like the IMDb (Internet Movie Database) for concerts, but didn’t want to limit it as just that because the service really offers so much more in terms of recommendations and social elements. Still, that’s a pretty good way to describe it as I’m finding myself using the database in a similar way. You know when you look up a movie on the IMDb and then you click on an actor to see what else they’re in, then you click on that movie? The same type of rabbit hole exists on Songkick when you start looking up concerts. In terms of monetization, the company has some interesting ideas. Right now, the company uses the affiliate model for tickets to upcoming shows it sells through its site. But with this new database, there are some other options including obviously placing advertising on the site, which should happen soon, Hogarth notes. Another more interesting idea is to create a way to sell merchandise from past concerts you were at, or just went to. Imagine being able to buy a recording from last night’s show, for example. Or maybe a t-shirt at a slightly discounted price because no one would buy them for $40. That could be pretty cool. Songkick was a Y Combinator company and raised an Angel round of funding back in March of 2008 and a Series A in December . The company has 14 people now working for it. CrunchBase Information Songkick Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
We've Got A Whole Lotta Bing Stickers. Want One? Top
Microsoft was kind enough to send us a few boxes of Bing stickers (we requested them). We don’t have enough surface area on our laptops, walls, floors, dogs, etc. to use them all, so if you want a couple, they’re all yours. Just send us a self addressed stamped envelope and we’ll put a few in the mail back to you. Send those envelopes to TechCrunch, PO Box 638, Menlo Park, CA 94026. If you want, send us one of your startup stickers to that address, to. We’ll force the interns to put them on their laptops and stand in front of the CrunchCam with it. Here’s one on the back of the last generation CrunchPad prototype: Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 

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