Monday, June 15, 2009

Y! Alert: TechCrunch

Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from TechCrunch


Twitter Reschedules Maintenance To Allow Iranian Protests To Continue Top
Twitter had been planning to have a 90 minute downtime tonight for maintenance. Given what’s going on over in Iran right now, that was a problem. And so Twitter has decided to reschedule the maintenance so the protests can go on. This is a good move by Twitter. It clearly didn’t want to have to move the maintenance window that it calls a “critical network upgrade,” but the #nomaintenance hashtag that has spent the entire day on the trending topic list, made it pretty clear that Twitter’s users don’t want the service going down at all during this important time. So Twitter worked with its network partner NTT America to reschedule the maintenance for 2-3 PM Pacific, which will be 1:30 in the morning in Iran, rather than during the day. Twitter uses the rest of the post to praise NTT America for its flexibility, but really this is all about Iran. The people over there are using Twitter as a tool of choice to spread information about what is going on, even as other outlets for communication are being blocked . [photo: flickr/. faramarz ] Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Spiceworks Spices Up Social IT Management Software Top
IT software maker Spiceworks is launching version 4.0 of their desktop software suite that helps a company’s IT staff collaborate with each other and manage “everything IT.” The IT management software, which is free and ad-supported, is currently being used by 700,000 IT professionals at small to medium businesses to inventory, monitor, troubleshoot, report on and run a help desk for their IT networks. The company says the upgrade will be rolled out later this week. The interesting part of Spicework’s software is that it includes a social network for IT pros that they use to help each other out. Its product roadmap is visible to all members, who can vote on which features they want to see next. The top feature, which will be in the new release, is a network map, visually showing every computer and network device on a company’s IT network, along with their relationships and bandwidth consumption. Spiceworks will be integrated with Twitter as well, allowing activity updates to be published to Twitter. IT pros at small and mid-sized companies can band together in buying clubs. And allows users to see how other IT pros have prioritized and managed various Windows Events. Users can now view Windows event background pages and read community group discussions on how to best troubleshoot and resolve related problems. Spiceworks calls this crowdsourced troubleshooting. The new version also offers plug-ins to manage apps from vendors including Microsoft, LiveOffice, Intel and Trend Micro. For example, the LiveOffice Mail Archive Widget will let IT staff archive email accounts from within Spiceworks from the dashboard itself. The Microsoft License Organizer allows users to automatically track Microsoft licenses and to order additional licenses when needed. Spiceworks charges companies like Microsoft and Intel to add these features. Spiceworks has ramped up its virtual help desk feature, letting users now control a help desk from a mobile phone. Users can create new tickets, edit & update existing tickets, and delete tickets remotely. Spiceworks recently added a host of plug-ins and social media widgets, letting users keep track track of alerts, tickets, new software, and new hardware, as well as inventory summaries. Spiceworks also lets users add themes and skins to the desktop, create customized user portals, and lets users drop in news widgets from RSS feeds and social networking widgets for Digg, Facebook, and MySpace Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Is QuickTime X The Missing Link For Flash On The iPhone? Top
Now this is interesting. Apparently, the new version of Apple’s video playing software, QuickTime X, will support the playback of .flv files in Snow Leopard. Yes, Adobe Flash files. The blog, Cateto blog dug up this seemingly small detail that was overlooked during all the other Snow Leopard WWDC announcements. But it’s anything but a small detail. Because if it’s true, that means that this same functionality could very well make it to the iPhone and iPod touch, as Cateto points out. Unfortunately, Cateto doesn’t offer any further detail about how he found out about this .flv support. He simply states is as a fact (I’m going to presume he’s being playing with the developer builds), offers a screenshot, and goes into some detail about how it will work on Snow Leopard. Apparently, after taking a little bit of time to load (depending on the size of the file), the Flash video files will start playing in QuickTime without any conversion needed. And if you want to convert the file to something like H.264 (the video compression format Apple loves to use), you can do that too. So while this is by no means a surefire proof of Flash video support coming to the iPhone or iPod touch (as many commenters are noting, the .flv support doesn’t necessarily mean QuickTime would be a Flash player, it could simply play those files if you can get them from somewhere), it is pretty interesting. Apple has so far resisted allowing Flash videos to play on its device because it claims Adobe’s Flash Player offers poor performance on the mobile side of things. Perhaps Apple has taken a backdoor way to add a certain level of support for Flash video. Apple’s current page for QuickTime X doesn’t mention .flv file support, but it’s a skeleton outline of the software right now. [via Daring Fireball ] CrunchBase Information Apple Adobe Systems Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
FriendFeed Blocked In Iran, The Service's Most Active Region Top
By now, you’ve probably heard all about the controversy surrounding the Iranian election and subsequent protests. If not, check here for a solid roundup. And you’ve probably also heard how this has spilled over into the tech world because Twitter has been one of the key points of contact between those inside Iran dissenting, and the outside world. If Twitter escaped being blocked by the Iranian government, you’d think FriendFeed would have too, right? Nope. FriendFeed has been “almost completely blocked” in Iran, co-founder Bret Taylor tells us. You might not think this matters too much since FriendFeed is much smaller than Twitter in terms of users, but the service was hugely popular in Iran, Taylor says. In fact, Iran is one of the service’s most active countries, and it is the most active region as defined by comments per user per day, according to Taylor. Now you can see why Iran apparently wanted to block it. FriendFeed is great at facilitating conversations around topics. The reason for this is that it’s so quick to post a comment and have it be added to a thread. While this can sometimes lead to an angry mob situation , it also can be extremely effective at having a conversation about an important topic in real-time. Except, of course, when the Iranian government blocks you. The only people getting on to FriendFeed from inside Iran now are apparently doing so through proxies. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Bezos Doesn't Like Google's Book Settlement Either Top
Google’s book settlement with the Author’s Guild has drawn an unusual number of critics and an antitrust investigation by the Department of Justice. Amazon CEO Jefrey Bezos doesn’t like it either. Asked about the settlement onstage today at Wired’s Disruptive By Design Conference, Bezos replied: That settlement in our opinion needs to be revisited. It doesn't seem right that you should kind of get a prize for violating a large series of copyrights. The class action settlement law . . . , you can't believe that is the way it actually works. Google’s book settlement gives it a blanket right to display the text of any orphan work (unclaimed books still under copyright), and to sell digital copies of such works. Since the majority of book actually fall under this category, the settlement would in effect give Google an exclusive right to show or sell these books. Amazon, the world’s largest book store, is not part of the settlement and would have no legal way to sell these same books without exposing itself to copyright violations. There is a way out of this. As I’ve suggested before : Google should amend some of the terms of the settlement to make it non-exclusive and the Author's Guild should extend the same terms to any other company or organization that wants to digitize orphan books. In other words, Google needs to free the orphans. Don't make this just a deal between authors and Google. Make it a deal between authors and any existing or future book digitizer. Bezos also had some good advice for company founders and entrepreneurs: “Be stubborn on the big things and be flexible on the details.” On failure, he pointed out that only rarely is the cost of failure more than the cost of not trying anything at all: One of the reasons companies are so non-experimental is that they over-dramatize how expensive failure is going to be. Failure is not that expensive. You almost never hear a company criticized for failing to try something As long as it is not a bet-the-company kind of failure, most companies can survive. Amazon has tried and failed at auctions and search, for example. But its bets on Web services and the Kindle are paying off. The winners pay for the losers. That is important to remember. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Brightkite For Android Coming Soon, Beta Access Open Now Top
The Android userbase may not be quite as big as that of iPhone OS - but man, they are one loud bunch. More so than any smartphone platform past, users of these two operating systems tend to consider themselves rivals of sorts; if you release an application for one, users of the other will begin to clamor almost immediately. It’s been about 8 months since the launch of their iPhone app , but geo-centric social network Brightkite is about to hush the calls of Android-toting Brightkite users everywhere. Brightkite’s CMO and Co-Founder Rob Lawson just wrote in to let us know that Brightkite’s Android debut should be submitted to the Android Market within the next few days, hopefully going live to all sometime within the next week. We’ve just cracked open a big barrel of Brightkite beta. Read on for our first impressions - or better yet, read on to find out how you can get beta access as well. First Impressions: If you liked what you saw of the iPhone app , you’ll probably like the Android app just as much - if not more. At first glance, I thought the Android app was missing a ton of functionality - that is, it seem that everything that’s placed in the row of tabs at the bottom of the iPhone port, such as Friends, the “Nearby” search function, Messaging, etc, was absent. Then I remembered that Android handsets have the advantage of a “Menu” hardware key. Pressed that - sure enough, everything I was looking for was tucked right in that little slide out drawer. It’s a great design decision; when it comes to designing for tiny mobile handset screens, every pixel counts. Moving these navigation items behind a single button press frees up about 15% of the screen real estate. The application’s interface is dead simple, whilst still providing just about every bit of Brightkite-based functionality you’d expect of it. In fact, we’re having a hard time finding anything you could do in the full-blown Brightkite web interface that you couldn’t do in this app. Check ins? Of course. Messaging? Yep. Search, friend management, even stuff as trivial as editing your profile picture - it’s all here. The interface is well polished, and the functionality is exhaustive - so is it perfect? Not quite. Just like most older brothers, the iPhone port is quite a bit faster than its fresh-faced Android sibling. The only time the Android app seemed quicker than the iPhone version was during the initial startup; after that, most actions took 2-3x longer. Of course, the iPhone release has been around for 8 months, and we’re dealing with beta software on the Android end. Chances are there’s some room for optimization. Beta access : You’re probably tired of hearing us blabber on at this point. iPhone this, Android that - you get it. You just want to play with it yourself. Fortunately, that’s pretty easy. Brightkite has sent over a few scannable QR codes which will get anyone with an Android phone into the beta. Here’s how: Make sure you can install applications that aren’t from the Android Market. To do so: Hit the menu, then go to Settings, then Applications, then check the “Unknown Sources” option. If you haven’t already, install the “Barcode Scanner” application from the Market. You’ll need this to scan the QR code below. Scan the proper code below. No need to print the QR code out - Barcode Scanner should be able to read it right off your monitor. It will open your browser to the proper page, and download should begin. If you’re running Android v1.5, otherwise known as “Cupcake”: If, for some reason, you’re still on Android v1.1: Disclosure: Brightkite’s competitor Loopt should be considered a TechCrunch sponsor, and Brightkite helped pay for the booze at a recent Crunchgear reader meetup . [PSGallery=2j8rwq53dv] Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Twitter Takes A Breather Top
After experiencing torrid growth during the first months of the year, Twitter took a breather in May. According to new comScore data released today, Twitter had 17.6 million U.S. visitors in May, which is only 3.5 percent increase from the 17 million U.S. visitors comScore registered in April. One month does not make a trend, but this is a screeching slowdown from the 82 percent month-over-month growth Twitter had in April and 131 percent growth in March. Recent Compete data also points to a similar slowdown in growth. These are just U.S. numbers. (ComScore measured 32 million unique visitors worldwide in April). But up until now Twitter’s global growth rate has closely followed its U.S. growth rate. Remember, these numbers only reflect visitors to Twitter.com, not the actual number of registered or active users, which is much less. By one count, Twitter had about 11.5 million registered accounts in May. And probably about half of all consumption of Twitter messages occurs in mobile and desktop clients such as Tweetie and Tweetdeck, which comScore doesn’t capture. The past few months, more and more traffic was driven to Twitter as politicians, TV journalists, celebrities and cute cats discovered the service and promoted it. Many people visited Twitter out of curiosity and maybe never returned. The measure of Twitter’s success will be how many of those grazers become active users. A short-term breather is to be expected after the astounding growth Twitter went through earlier this year. But if Twitter can’t convince mainstream users to make it a daily habit, this one-month breather could turn into a longer stretch where the service tries to find its natural audience. What do you think, has Twitter peaked? Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Facebook Finally Catches Up To MySpace In The U.S. Top
It’s over. Facebook is now as large as MySpace in the U.S., according to May data released today by comScore. Facebook actually passed MySpace by a smidgeon, with 70.278 million unique visitors compared to MySpace’s 70.255 million. While Facebook passed MySpace on a worldwide basis last year , as recently as last March, Facebook was still trailing MySpace by 9 million unique visitors . In May, Facebook gained another 2.8 million unique visitors in the U.S. MySpace, which has been stagnating lately and as a result now has a new CEO , lost about 700,000 unique visitors during the month. A few months ago, it looked like it might take Facebook until the end of the summer to catch up to MySpace, but it has already done so. Don’t expect MySpace to reverse this trend and regain its top spot anytime soon. Having just successfully launched its “ vanity URLs ,” Facebook looks to be on the verge of another hype cycle. Just 15 minutes after the launch, a half million people had signed up for vanity URLs. And as of sometime today, some 6 million users will have apparently signed up — just three days after it launched. Practically everyone is talking about the company once again, from blogs to the mainstream media. And all this stems from a feature (vanity URLs) that MySpace actually had from the get-go. That itself seems to speak to how over this game is. And when you reverse the situation —MySpace recently launched a site-wide IM toolbar , that looks a lot like the one Facebook had — basically no one talked about it. CrunchBase Information Facebook MySpace Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Ngmoco Hires Away Sega President Simon Jeffery To Head Up iPhone Game Network Top
iPhone game developer ngmoco is announcing today its own cross-promotion publishing network fro iPhone games. The publishing network, called Plus+, will be headed up by Simon Jeffery, the current president and COO of Sega of America. Prior to Sega, Jeffery was president of LucasArts. His new title at ngmoco will be chief publishing officer. This is a major hire for the iPhone game startup, whose CEO Neil Young is also a former star executive from the console gaming world (he came from Electronic Arts). Ngmoco is already one of the top game developers on the iPhone. Its hits include Rolando, Mazefinger, Star Defense, Topple, and WordFu. Jeffery will be running a new business for ngmoco, Plus+ Publishing. The company already cross-promotes its own games. For instance, about 15 percent of Rolando sales come from cross-promotion, according to Young. With Plus+ Publishing, outside iPhone game developers will be able to apply to become part of this cross-promotion network also. Ngmoco will offer to publish and market iPhone games under its own Plus brand, as well as simply cross-promote other games using its own popular games and the other games which become part of Plus+ (with different revenue splits depending on the level of service). Developers who want to apply can email gamemakers [at] ngmoco [dot] com. As part of Plus+, ngmoco is also going to launch its own iPhone social gaming network called the Plus+Network. For any game in the network, players will be able to create a single profile with friends, followers, leaderboards, a metascore across all the games, awards, play challenges, and a game catalog. (Friends are reciprocal, followers are one-way relationships). Ngmoco will roll out this social network in some of its own upcoming games, including Star Defense, Rolando 2, and a real-time first-person shooter. The social network will launch as a standalone network, but Young expects to integrate it with Facebook Connect and other existing social networks as well. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
YouTube: Choose Your Own Adventure, Emphasis On "Ad" Top
As we all know, advertising has been a tough nut for YouTube to crack. While a lot of videos feature overlaid ads at the bottom, some have been testing in-stream video ads that run before, during and after videos. Today, YouTube is starting to test a new way for users to interact with those ads. On a “small percentage of videos,” you will now have the option of watching one “ Promoted Video ” (a video someone is paying for YouTube to promote, so yes, an ad) at the beginning of the clip, or choose to see a few different in-stream ads throughout the clip. And if you choose the one long clip beforehand, you will get to choose which clip you watch. Unfortunately, “none” is not an option. Joking aside, this is sort of an interesting way to do advertising. I can’t imagine that many people will have the preference to watch one pre-roll ad over another, but the option to do either a pre-roll or mid-stream ad is a nice one. Hulu has been testing a similar option , though I have yet to see it. I would definitely opt to sit through a long ad before a show or movie plays rather than having the interruptions throughout. Of course, as we all know, most people would choose this pre-roll option and proceed to completely ignore the ad, so it will be interesting to see if YouTube sees that happen as well with this option. It seems smart that YouTube is including the pre-roll video ratings when you’re making your selection of which one to watch, so perhaps a high rating will entice some to watch it. And at least these promoted videos aren’t always just straight-up ads, and instead are sometimes people who really, really want their videos to go viral and are willing to pay for it. CrunchBase Information YouTube Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Social Collaboration Platform CollectiveX Is Reborn As Groupsite Top
CollectiveX,  a LinkedIn-like professional social network focused on offering collaboration and sharing tools for groups (companies, boards of directors) has renamed the company Groupsite.com, after its flagship product Groupsites. Groupsites lets anyone create a social network for either business or social purposes. The company has also raised an undisclosed amount of funding in the range of “hundreds of thousands of dollars” from Siemer & Associates and is in the process of raising another round. We first wrote about CollectiveX, founded by serial entrepreneur Clarence Wooten, back in 2005 when it first went into private beta. In May 2006, the service launched, and at TechCrunch40, they launched Groupsites. Last fall, CollectiveX launched version 2.0 of Groupsites. The idea of Groupsites overlaps with both LinkedIn and Ning. Groupsite.com provides a easy-to-use platform for business groups to share contact information, files (meeting minutes, financials, etc.) and and collaborate on calendars, forums etc. Similar to Ning, Groupsites lets users quickly and easily create a social network. And groups can create shared customizable websites for members. Users can also take any module on a page and embed it on a third party site, or pull any third party widgets or code into their Groupsite site. Groupsites currently hosts the networks of more than 26,000 groups and powers close to 5,000 company intranets and project workgroups. Groupsites is free, and the company charges additional fees for additional storage, advertising removal, and other premium features. Large companies can also pay a yearly license fee to create multiple networks. Groupsites has also launched a “Certified Partner Program,” which aims to be a collaboration of partners, including developers, designers, trainers, social media consultants and community builders, who commit to using Groupsite.com tools to help groups understand and use the platform. As we’ve said in the past, Groupsite isn't the sexiest startup we've covered, but it uses a lot of the really innovative collaboration features to really help groups get organized. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
This Guy Needs An Investor And Some Adderall Top
Great email in the inbox today from a guy “looking for investor.” We get a lot of these types of emails, but usually there is at least some passing attempt at focus on a single idea. Not this guy, though, he’s working 16 hour days on a storm sewer filter, new solar products and a “built-in ramp for wheelchairs” that he says is “literally” a reinvention of the wheel. Plus a “few other items.” He’s a typical genius entrepreneur type, meaning he’s innocently trying to fix everything broken around him, and smart enough to sort of do it. If he’s at all for real, what he needs is some solid drugs to control his ADHD and a business partner with loads of common sense, good people skills and an IQ in the 100 range. Is that you? Let us know and we’ll introduce you. Goal is to focus on the best idea, raise some money and buy an island within 18 months. The email is below: Hello, My name is [removed]. I have patented a few products that have some good traction and greater promise, and am seeking investor. We have developed a storm sewer filter that is being considered by several major cities including Santa Cruz Ca, Simi Valley Ca, Madison Wi and others. Simi Valley wants to purchase, but like me, they are looking for money, which they hope to have in the next few months from federal grants. We are also working with WI Department of Natural Resources to establish standards for statewide deployment of our filter. Hopefully, we will also be in distribution with New Pig in the next week or two, as they are calling us, rather than us calling them. Also have some patents on some solar products that distributors are very interested in and are awaiting prototypes for evalutation, so that they may distribute. One solar product cuts installation time and the other cools overheating panels, which can increase productivity by 50%. As of now, I am forced to manufacture all prototypes in my garage, which is very time consuming as it is expensive to outsource. This cuts into sales time and development time. Lastly, I have literally reinvented the wheel. I have a patent on a built-in ramp for wheelchairs, dollies or any other vehicle that needs to get over an obstacle. Remarkably simple and cheap and works like a charm. It is simply a ramp (looks much like a fender) that is attached to an arm that sits on the axle and rotates into place and you roll over it. Walter Reid medical directed me to their wheelchair vendor and they are awaiting a prototype as well. There are a few other items that I have in mind. My background was as a QRA engineer responsible for process optimization within the semiconductor manufacturing arena. It was only six months ago that I realized that the knack I had for modifying equipment and procedures could have a far greater reach than a solitary wafer fab. Anyway, I am looking for investors, as this is getting expensive. I am working no less than 16 hours a day right now and have worked as long as 49 hours straight on these projects. I am committed to winning, but know that I could move further and faster with some funding, as my partner and I are undertaking every aspect of the operation. Let me know if interested. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Vooices Could Verify Celebs On Twitter, And Already Works Top
Vooices is a new API startup which allows anyone to overlay a web app with voice interaction over a phone line. An example is the very simple game the makers developed called Wordz where you dial a phone number and read out the color of the word. And the Maps application they have mocked up supports most Google Mapping commands and uses the latest version of the Vooices API. The effect of being able to tell the map to Zoom In or Zoom Out or “North”, is really very, very cool. More intrigingly, Twitter could, instead of verifying accounts without actually verifying them , use something like Vooices instead. And in fact, Vooices has already built the app they need. Voiceboo Verify uses the Vooices API to authorise Twitter Accounts using a persons voice - and then gets the community to vote on whether it’s really them . Here’s how it works… Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Chris Anderson's Counterintuitive Rules For Charging For Media Online Top
Wired editor-in chief-Chris Anderson kicked off his magazine’s Disruptive By Design conference today in New York City with a speech about how the Internet makes everything free, which is the topic of his latest book, Free: The Future of A Radical Price He articulated something that is now increasingly becoming obvious: As products go digital, their marginal cost goes to zero. “This is the law of gravity online,” says Anderson. “Everything that becomes digital will become free. There will be a free version, either you will be competing with free or giving it away for free and selling something else. If it is not zero today, it will be zero tomorrow.” When he addressed how this is affecting media and whether or not traditional media organizations should charge for their content online, he draws a number of conclusions from what the Wall Street Journal is doing. The tension is not so much free versus paid, but free versus freemium. In one slide, Anderson comes up with the following rules for media companies trying to figure out how to make money online: The best model is a mix of free and paid You can't charge for an exclusive that will be repeated elsewhere, Don't charge for the most popular content on your site, Content behind a pay wall should appeal to niches, the narrower the niche the better This is somewhat counterintuitive because it means media sites that want to charge for content should charge for their niche stuff instead of their most popular content. But that is exactly the right way to look at it if you want to maximize your advertising revenues. Let the popular content be paid for by advertising, and the niche, exclusive content can be sold to fewer peopel at a higher price. Anderson, whose last book was the Long Tail, predicts in media: “The head of the curve will be free and the tail of the curve will be paid.” Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Devs Roll Over To Palm's "Recommendation" Not To Talk About Pre Web Tethering Top
In an example of rolling over in the name of "good relationships," the Pre Dev Wiki has shut down their tethering page because "Sprint could get angry." This is in stark contrast with iPhone devs who couldn't give two squirts about "good relationships" and instead produce interesting technical content including unlocked phones. "We have been politely cautioned by Palm that any discussion of tethering during the Sprint exclusivity period (and perhaps beyond—we don't know yet) will probably cause Sprint to complain to Palm, and if that happened then Palm would be forced to react against the people running the IRC channel and this wiki.
 
Google, Other Tech Heavyweights Back Volunteer Community Service All for Good Top
A coalition of non-profit organizations, technology developers, designers, marketers and others has unveiled the alpha version of a new Web service dubbed All for Good in an effort to build some sort of ‘Craigslist for volunteer services’. The metaphor stands, and not only because Craig Newmark from the popular free classifieds service is one of the backers of the project (Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post is also said to be on board). All for Good basically lets you browse volunteer activities and find related events based on your geographical location and/or interests. The site brings together listings from organizations and local groups to help you find volunteer activities that fit your time and talent. If you ‘like’ a certain item, you can share it with your friends across various social networking services, hopefully spawning more attention and the possibility for the activity or event to spread virally within your network. According to the about page, All for Good was “inspired by the call of President Obama to engage more Americans in service”. The link to the White House is notable: according to a report by MSNBC , the seeds for All for Good were planted by people who advised Barack Obama during the transition period. Two names that circulate: Jonathan Greenblatt, a faculty member at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California at LA, and Sonal Shah, former head of global development at Google.org who currently leads the new White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation. The report also cites Kate Bedingfield, a White House spokeswoman, who apparently said she felt All for Good is “an exciting and innovative idea” and added that the White House is working with the corporation to explore ways to use the tool. The site is in the process of being transferred to a new non-profit organization called Our Good Works, formed by some of the people who initiated the project. For the moment, the project is hosted and managed by Google, and several of the search and advertising giant’s engineers developed All for Good as a 20-percent project (as widely known, Google lets engineers spend a day a week on projects that interest them). In the spirit of openness, All for Good is completely open source and lets people log in with a slew of digital identity providers, including Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, Yahoo and OpenID. The service also comes with an extensive API that makes it possible for third-party developers to create applications based on data generated by the All for Good community. (Via Ostatic ) Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Get A Job With Reddit Jobs. Or At Least Vote On One. Top
There are no shortage of job listing sites out there, especially in this economy. But how do you know if the jobs listed on any of them are actually any good? Why not vote on them? Not surprisingly, that’s a key selling point of Reddit Jobs , a new job listing site branded by the popular social voting site. Just with the regular Reddit site, on the main page you’ll see a list of content — in this case, jobs — and you can give any of them an “up” or “down” vote depending on if you like them or not. “We think this is a pretty sweet opportunity for employers to find great tech-savvy folks and learn more about how they’re perceived by potential employees,” Luke Groesbeck, the co-founder of JobAlchemist (which created the site for Reddit), tells us. Clicking on any of these job listings will take you to a page with more information about the job. This information is presented in a standardized way that is easy to follow with headers for the position including: “Overview,” “Who You Are,” “What You’ll Do,” “What We Offer,” and “How to Apply.” This page also features a nice drop-down Google Map of where the company is located and has elements such as ways to share job postings over other social networks. But it’s the actual job posting functionality that could be a key feature. “Employers can either post jobs in a quick 1-2 minute process or build a profile to share more about themselves and get feedback on their listings from the reddit community,” according to Groesbeck. It’s similar to Startuply , another job listing site that JobAlchemist has built, and has seen some moderate success. Reddit Jobs is technically the first white label version of Startuply, and that branding and built-in community should help it grow even faster. But for posting jobs, there are costs involved — but at least they’re very straightforward. It will cost you $300 to list an opening on Reddit Jobs for 30 days. There are also discounts for listings done in bulk. So why did Reddit want to make a job board? “Given the state of the economy (and our pool of talented programmers ) it made perfect sense for us — and will likely be a great white label solution for other community sites,” Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian tells us. It’s also a nice way for Reddit and parent Conde Nast to make some money. Applying the social voting idea to monetization practices seems to be a hot issue right now. Reddit rival Digg just recently launched the ability to vote on ads on its site. As a special promotion to commemorate the launch, Reddit Jobs is giving some fast-acting TechCrunch readers who wish to post jobs a steep discount on the rate. The first 50 who use the code “TechCrunch” when listing a job on the site will get $175 off of the listing price. CrunchBase Information Reddit Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Caterina Fake's Hunch: "Yahoo Answers Is Not The Answer." Top
In search, nobody wants to go up against Google. Even Microsoft is trying to position Bing as a “decision engine” even though it is really just a search engine. But Hunch , a startup which launched publicly today, is an actual decision engine. The only thing it attempts to do is help you make a decision through a question-and-answer interface. Hunch is part of a recent flowering of Q&A sites (such as Aardvark and Mahalo Answers ) which address a part of search that is orthogonal to what Google does. In part, these startups are responding to the success of Yahoo Answers, but they also push beyond what Yahoo Answers does. Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, who worked on Yahoo Answers before she left Yahoo and is now running product design at Hunch, says: “Yahoo Answers is not the answer.” The problem with Yahoo Answers is that most of the answers aren’t very good. As long as one answer is good, that is the one which comes up highest in results. But it doesn’t really learn from all the answers to a particular question come up with a better answer. Fake explains: “The question has been asked and answered thousands of times. Collective knowledge systems don't work unless they retain knowledge, you can add knowledge to them in a simple and straightforward way, and it gets smarter every time somebody uses it.” I had a long discussion with Fake about what Hunch is trying to do on Friday. You can search for questions which have already been entered into the system, or add your own. Each question is actually a series of questions with multiple-choice answers which take you down different paths (or, “decision trees’). The questions and answers are contributed by Hunch’s community (so far the site has been seeded by its 40,000 beta users). “Anyone can add a new set of sub-questions to main question, and improve the overall results in the same way that many people can contribute to the same Wikipedia article to make it better or add tags to someone else’s photos on Flickr. It only takes aminimal effort to make each question marginally better. For instance, the question “Should I get a convertible?” leads to a series of other sub-questions aimed at helping you make that decision: “Are you okay with the possibility that you’ll pay more for a convertible?”; “How’s the weather in your city/country?”; “Do you live somewhere known for car theft or crime?”; “Do you keep a lot of things loosely scattered around the interior of your car?”; “”Do you often wear fancy or personally valuable hats or scarves?” After you answer all the questions, you get an answer. This could be a yes or no answer or s specific recommendation, such as what blogs you should read . At the end of this process, you tell Hunch or not you agree with the result. Hunch not only has a results algorithm, but also has a question selection algorithm, which it tunes to each person. Theoretically, the more questions you answer on Hunch, the more it knows about you and the better follow-up questions it can present to come up with the best final answer. It sounds complicated, but the user interface is simple and game-like. You are presented with a series of questions, and you click on the answers which apply to you. Then at the end, you get an answer to the original question you were exploring. Fake estimates that about 40 percent of the topics on Hunch right now are monetizable with ads or affiliate links. If you try to use Hunch to figure out which camera you should buy, for example, and the answer turns out to be the Nikon D80 , already you will see a sponsored affiliate link to Amazon. Other business models might emerge in the future. Other sites will be able to tap into Hunch’s question-selection and answer-selection algorithms to create their own Q&A system. Using Hunch’s API , a developer could create a custom product recommendation app for retail sites. Bob’s Bait And Tackle shop could set up a series of questions and answers to guide shoppers to the perfect fly or fishing tackle. All of these questions and answers would then feed back into Hunch’s core system. The more people who use the system, the smarter it should get. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Fidel Castro's Son Cyber-Stung By Cuban Blogger In Exile Top
“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” ( source ) Or in this case, on the Internet Fidel Castro’s son wouldn’t know you’re actually a male Cuban living in exile posing as a woman just to play a number on you. Apparently, Miami-based Luis Dominguez has duped 40-year old Antonio Castro into believing that he was chatting with a 27-year old female sports journalist named Claudia Valencia, using the man’s alleged weakness for “young women and sports”. Dominguez told the BBC that he has no regrets for the deception - which consisted of eight months of on-and-off chatting - saying he wanted to expose the hypocrisy of Cuba’s leadership, who enjoy “oppulent lifestyles”. No state secrets were revealed during the chats, and it’s unclear if the sessions involved cybersex of any kind. Gotta admire the dryness of the BBC report, which ends with: “The Cuban authorities have made no comment about the chats, but Claudia says the relationship has gone cold.” Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
The Postman Always Bings Twice Top
You may find this hard to believe, but back in the 90s, I was what you might consider a bit of a Microsoft fanboy. I bought practically every piece of software they made (yes, including Bob ). I was at the midnight launch of Windows 95 in my hometown. I bought Windows Me and XP the day they came out. But then a combination of things happened. First, Apple’s products started to get better and the iPod served as a gateway drug of sorts to their computers. Second, the rise of Google and the web as a whole made what desktop software I was using less important. Third, Microsoft’s products went through a period of lack of innovation, or worse, regressed . I bring this up because some people familiar with my work, seem to want to believe that I dislike all Microsoft products by default. That’s simply not true. Even to this day, I will praise the work Microsoft has done with the Xbox 360. And I find a smattering of other things within the company that I find interesting, like Azure . And now something else from Microsoft is coming on my radar: Bing . I’ll admit that I mocked Bing from the second I heard its name, as basically a non-starter. But here we are a few weeks later , and I’m still hearing a significant number of people talking about it when I go various places. At the very least, that’s a marketing win for Microsoft — but that will only get you so far. More interesting to me is that Bing does actually seem to be pretty good at what it was built to do: Search — er, sorry, “Discovery.” Take tonight, for example. The Los Angeles Lakers just won the NBA title, so there are a ton of searches right now for Kobe Bryant, the Lakers’ star player. I just did a search for him on both Bing and Google , and to be honest, Bing’s results are a lot better, at least for the here and now. On Bing, the top result is a full listing of Kobe’s box score from tonight. On Google, the top result is a link to his NBA.com player profile. A few spots down, Google gives me some YouTube clips, but they’re all old. There are no clips on Bing’s main page, but in the top “Highlights” tab, there is a ton of video from tonight’s game. The other tabs on Bing offer easy access to relevant information as well. Sure, Google has its own options to better tailor the results to my liking, but they’re still tucked away, the average user is not going to click on those. And so I really have to say that Bing’s results, as presented to me in this case, are better than Google’s. Now, that’s just one example, and it’s of a breaking event. But still, I’ve noticed this on a few hot items recently. And perhaps that’s why we’re hearing all the talk about Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin scrambling a team to address the Bing question. I’m not sure how much weight to put in such a report — while it’s become basically the company’s canned response, I’m sure Google really is always tweaking its search engine/strategy. But even the rumor of Google being at least interested by anything Microsoft is doing in search is something we really haven’t heard before. And that’s more than anything Yahoo — still the #2 search provider — can say recently . So will Bing replace Google as my default search engine? No. The main reason for this is still very simple. Even if Google and Bing have similar results, and even if Bing offers better results in some cases, Google has already won the search war as it exists today. It already exists in people’s minds as basically synonymous with search. Bing could do very well on the desktop web, but that will basically mean low double-digit share versus Google’s high double-digit share. And while you might point out that something like how Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser once had an over 90% share of the market, but has been failing steadily in recent years. I’d blame that on the fact that Microsoft rested on its laurels with that huge lead for far too long (it basically stopped work on IE for several years), and now has a browser that is arguably the worst on the market. Google, as a search engine is not in any way, shape, or form the worst on the market. And plenty would still say the exact opposite. I just can’t see Google becoming complacent and yielding ground on search the same way Microsoft did with IE. And so its success should remain perpetual. If nothing else, Google is now built-in as the default browser or homepage on far too many web browsers. That’s not a battle Bing can win. I know that it’s touting itself as the “decision engine,” but that’s a marketing gimmick that will wear off soon. Search is search — ultimately, people want one place to do it. For now, many will settle for two (Google and Twitter being two examples), if they serve a completely different purpose, but that will change with time. And everyone will also realize that despite the rhetoric, Bing is really not any different as a tool from Google. And when that happens, Google will win that battle. But there is an interesting opportunity for Bing in the mobile space, I think. Yahoo has been touting mobile as a bright spot for its search product in recent months because it knows that the one really hot area where Google had not yet fully won the battle. The reason for that is that mobile web browsing is still a fundamentally different beast than desktop web browsing. While some browsers like Safari on the iPhone have search built-in, most do not. And so the playing field is much more open on the mobile web. Microsoft should be pushing hard to make Bing the mobile search (or decision, or whatever it wants to call it) engine of choice. Because mobile browsing on the smaller screen with different input methods is different than the desktop, it stands to reason that searching on these devices should also be somewhat different aside from the simply cosmetic changes. And there are quite a few interesting things you can do easier on mobile device than you can on a desktop, like location. And location leads to some interesting things with advertising, which, at the end of the day, is what this all really comes down to for both Google and Microsoft now from a business perspective. It’s interesting that Microsoft seems to have some good buzz for Bing so far. And I do think it’s actually warranted. But it’s just a first step. Bing has a name that is on people’s minds right now, but it needs to continue innovating to keep it there. And in my mind, that extends far beyond the desktop space, which Google is not going to yield anytime soon. If Microsoft insists on playing Google’s game on Google’s turf, I fear Microsoft Bing may ultimately end up just as forgotten as Microsoft Bob. But I think these past few weeks have proven that there is at least a little something to Bing, and so it doesn’t have to be that way. CrunchBase Information Bing Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Hunch.com's decision making engine launches. Someone add Twitter now Top
Hunch , the new startup from Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, has launched and it's beguilingly fun. After filling out 42 questions ranging from "Have you sky dived" to "Do you like it when the cabin crew cracks jokes on airplanes?" I was presented with a number of things I might be interested in (I chose which film directors I should watch: Tim Burton). I was hooked enough to fill out the profile page (you can get answers without logging in) and at this point it becomes clear: Hunch is a social network where the social object is sharing questions (and thus answers) which might be relevant to you. The more questions you answer the more your profile page become relevant to you. And you can of course share those questions around with a widget.
 
Microsoft Has Found The Cheapest Meals In America (Or Is Just Cheap) Top
So, maybe you heard about Microsoft’s newest promotion to get people to use one of its products. If you download Internet Explorer 8 through this site , Microsoft promises to donate 8 meals per download to a group called Feeding America , which wants to end hunger in this country. Sounds great, right? Read the fine print. Only complete downloads of Windows® Internet Explorer® 8 through browserforthebetter.com from June 8, 2009 through August 8, 2009 qualify for the charitable donation to Feeding America®. Microsoft® is donating $1.15 per download to Feeding America® up to a maximum of $1,000,000. Meals are used for illustrative purposes only. Meal conversion is effective until June 30th, 2010. In case you missed it, let me highlight the hilarious part: $1.15 per download . For 8 meals . Let’s do the math. $1.15 divided by 8 equals just about $0.14 a meal. I don’t know where Microsoft is eating, but I have never heard of any place that you can get a meal for 14 cents. And this isn’t one of those “for just 10 cents a day…” commercials that promise to feed starving children in Africa, this is meant to feed people in the United States. Hell, a gum ball from one of those machines at a convenient store costs 25 cents. Some cost 50 cents. That’s almost 4 meals by Microsoft’s math. We all know how this works. Microsoft was never actually giving anyone any meals (hence the, “Meals are used for illustrative purposes only.”), it was just pledging to throw money at what sounds like a worthy cause if it got something in return — users to download what many consider to be a sub-par web browser. But if you’re going to do that, don’t claim to be giving 8 meals away for every download, when you’re really only donating $1.15. That’s just misleading. If you’re really interested in helping to fight hunger in America, go to the actual Feeding America site and donate. They don’t even force IE8 upon you. Of course, the minimum donation amount they recommend on the site is $25 — which is something like 180 Microsoft “meals.” Update : Rather than respond to all of the comments saying the same thing, let me be clear: I understand how this works — as I said above, it’s all about Microsoft donating a dollar amount to a charity, and not really about the meals. That’s why it’s misleading to say in big bold letters that it’s donating 8 meals for every IE download. Microsoft is not actually donating any meals, it is donating a relatively small amount of money to a charity that provides meals. How small is the amount from Microsoft? Well, it’s spending a reported $80 million to promote Bing, but is only giving $1 million to fight hunger. This despite the huge words talking about how awful it is that 1 in 8 Americans struggle to have enough to eat. One thing Americans aren’t struggling with is a lack of web search options, or a lack of advertising. Of course, I’m being a bit facetious, hunger is a very real issue and Microsoft has a right to wrap its own agenda (getting people to download IE8) in a charitable cause. I just find it inappropriate to use the cause in a misleading way. If you’re donating about a dollar per download, say that. Don’t say how many meals you’re providing based on some numbers that, as commenter Josh Forman notes , don’t even add up. That was obviously just a tacky way for Microsoft to get a number “8″ that would match its own IE8, for branding and marketing purposes. [thanks Andrew] CrunchBase Information Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
About That New CrunchPad Video Top
It seems like I’ve heard that title somewhere before. Oh yeah, almost exactly . So this time a guest at our party last week decided to corner Chandra Rathakrishnan , the CEO of our CrunchPad partner Fusion Garage, and talk him into doing this ridiculous “unboxing” of the CrunchPad. The video went up and the blogosphere went wild , just like last time. The video has now been removed from YouTube. This was not a sanctioned or official video, nor is it even very interesting. It’s just the last prototype being taken out of its box (which should be sort of obvious, pictures of the prototype in the video have been circulating since April ). It’s certainly not the launch prototype, pictured here, which doesn’t actually exist yet. The only official information on the CrunchPad at this point is in the blog post I wrote a couple of weeks ago, and you can send an email to crunchpad@techcrunch.com for various updates. We’re planning an event in July to give more information. Until then, I hope we’ve seen the last of these ridiculous fingerprint smudged “unboxing” videos. And that guest who took the video without talking to me first won’t be back at any TechCrunch events anytime soon. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
GeeksOnAPlane Briefing On The Chinese Tech Industry At Startonomics Beijing Top
This past Thursday, the GeeksOnAPlane group of traveling techies had the opportunity to attend Startonomics Beijing and learn about broad swaths of the Chinese web industry. The speakers, who represented companies such as Google China , Kong Zhong , Five Minutes and ChinaNetCloud , discussed topics such as gaming, social networking, network infrastructure and internet cafes. Overall, we were impressed not only by how massive the Chinese market for computing-related services is, but how fast it’s still growing as well. According to Georg Godula, whose company Web2Asia helps internet companies get off the ground in East Asian countries, there are currently about 350 million internet users in China, many of which are very new. In 2008 alone, the internet population grew by approximately 80 million people. That’s an astonishing 220,000 per day, or 9,000 per hour. Most of these users are quite young, with a distribution centering around 18-24 years old. Since the number of users outstrips the number of computers, Chinese youth spends much of its time browsing the web and playing games in Internet cafes, particularly in less dense parts of the country where few alternative entertainment options exist. Perhaps the most refreshing presentation of the day came from Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, President of Google China, who admitted that Google has had a difficult time breaking into the Chinese market and competing against Baidu , the dominant search engine here. He attributed the slow advances in their marketshare to patience and humility, explaining that Google has had to carefully learn about the market and how it differs from those in the West. This was a trend that appeared throughout many of the presentations. Foreign companies who try to localize for China are often outgunned by Chinese competitors who know the culture and business environment here better. They also tend to suffer from a litany of other missteps, such as entering China too late, failing to set up a local development team, getting blocked by complex local legislation, and simply being outwitted by local competitors with better ideas. Lee gave an overview of how Chinese internet usage differs from what we see in the United States. According to studies, the Chinese read news and conduct searches at a similar level to their American counterparts. But they read and write email a lower frequency, preferring other communication methods like instant messaging (Twitter, for that reason, has the potential to take off here…if numerous other clones like Digu , Fanfou or Zuosa don’t take the wind out of its sails first). The Chinese also consume a lot more music, almost all of which is pirated or provided by free by companies like Google. Gaming and blogging are also two popular activities, while ecommerce still plays a comparatively smaller role in the web industry. Kaiser Kuo, a technology commentator in Beijing, presented the Startonomics crowd with a balanced view of how censorship works in China. On the one hand, it poses a definite human rights issue that needs to be solved over time. On the other hand, reports of censorship in China are often over-exaggerated, especially when they affect Western services like Twitter (which is only used by a very, very small fraction of the population here). He was keen on pointing out that the Chinese government isn’t like a bogeyman always lurking around the corner ready to crush out any and all vocalized signs of dissent. Instead, it tends to focus on preventing organized resistance, while leaving most individuals who air their grievances online alone. If anything, censorship plays out indirectly, with the government putting pressure on web companies to patrol their own users’ content. Pornography, for example, is strictly banned here, so companies need to police their services vigilantly or suffer penalties. The biggest trend we saw throughout the presentations was just how big gaming is for Chinese youth. While mobile technologies aren’t as big here as in Japan, the Chinese spend a lot of time and money on casual games, especially in internet cafes. The industry is lucrative, with a fraction of wealthy gamers (~10%) willing to shell out lots of money for virtual goods. It’s no surprise then that 6 of the biggest 10 internet companies are game publishers. World of Warcraft is unusually popular, given that it’s made by a Western company (Blizzard), although legacy games such as Starcraft and Counterstrike also make the rounds via piracy. Other big players include the Chinese companies Netease , Giant Interactive (who among other titles developed Zhengtu Online), Kingsoft and the9 . While there’s been a shift from console to browser-based games in the last few years, the impulse has remained the same: Chinese youth play games not particularly because of the challenge or entertainment, but rather because they are lonely bored and have few other recreational options. Steve Mushero of ChinaNetCloud , an internet service provider, gave a detailed overview of how fractured the internet infrastructure is here. Unlike the mesh of networks that carry data across the United States, data served up in China tends to stay on the network of one monopoly. Unfortunately, these monopolies tend to be region-specific, making it difficult and costly to send data across the country latency-free. The Chinese also don’t apply standard internet protocols such as BGP , complicating life for system admins who already have to deal with data centers that vary widely in quality and price. While bandwidth is a big business here and readily available, connections in and out of the country are flaky - here one day, gone the next. There’s a perception in the West that Chinese web companies clone Western services instead of coming up with their own ideas. My impression has been that this is certainly the case, although not exclusively. There are also web companies trying new things, or at least copying Western services and then remolding them for China; they just tend to get drowned out by the clones, which actually affect Chinese companies as well. The popular social network Kaixin (at kaixin001.com), for example, was cloned by competitor Xiaonei after the latter company bought the domain kaixin.com. Overall, the industry is like the Wild West. There are a slew of startups (unlike what we saw in Japan), many of which are going after the same markets and creating an intense competitive environment for foreign and local companies alike. Slides from Startonomics Beijing can be found on SlideShare . Dr. Kai-Fu Lee’s presentation is embedded below. I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank Founders Fund and BlueRun Ventures for helping make this trip possible for the entire GeeksOnAPlane group. Google China: The Chinese Internet Overview View more Microsoft Word documents from Geeks on a Plane . Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 

CREATE MORE ALERTS:

Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted

Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope

Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more

News - Only the news you want, delivered!

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

Weather - Get today's weather conditions




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

No comments:

Post a Comment