Tuesday, June 23, 2009

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Interview: Reuben Langdon, Motion Capture Artist For James Cameron's Avatar Top
Reuben Langdon is a motion capture artist in motion pictures and games — you've probably directed his actions without knowing it in such games as Resident Evil 5 and Dead Rising. Most recently he's been working on James Cameron's epic CG film, Avatar . He took some time out of his busy backflipping schedule to talk to us about motion capture, having his own studio, and working with Cameron on the biggest and most ambitious CG movie of all time.
 
Google Shares Its Need For Speed Top
Google has always been about speed. From its highly streamlined homepage to vast server farms, the company goes to extreme lengths to ensure that all of your search queries are returned in a fraction of a second. Now, it wants the whole web to be that fast. In a video posted to the company’s official blog, a number top Google engineers and evangelists outline Google’s goal: to make surfing the web as instantaneous as “flipping through the pages of a glossy magazine”. It’s a lofty goal to be sure, but given the accomplishments we’ve seen in the last 15 years, it certainly seems attainable. Now for the matter of actually getting there. To help achieve that goal, Google has unveiled a new Speed section of Google Code. The site includes a variety of tutorials and tech talks aimed to help developers optimize their code, with articles including “ How gzip compression works ” and “ Optimizing JavaScript code . There’s also a selection of Tools from both Google and many third parties. So what are the biggest problems remaining? In the site’s FAQ , Google outlines a few of the biggest issues: Bandwidth is only one factor that contributes to latency. There are several other factors such as: Websites that do not follow best practices in web development and are unnecessary slow Web servers are often not optimized for speed Several internet protocols were designed 10/15 years ago, when websites and web applications were different Browsers only recently started focusing on speed. Many Internet users are using slow browsers We believe we all need to work together as a community to address all the factors that keep the internet slow. Google makes it clear that this isn’t a problem it can solve on its own. In the video below, Google Senior VP Engineering Bill Coughran describes the movement as “a series of difficult advocacy steps, over a long period of time”. But it’s worth it. As Performance Evangelist Steve Souders says as he closes out the video, “what we should also hold out as a goal, as an aspiration for what we can achieve by making the Internet a faster place, is raising the quality of life around the world.” Photo by michaelmcd Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
MySpace Layoffs Coming To Countries Where It Is Getting Trounced By Facebook Top
This morning, when MySpace announced the decimation of its international staff (300 out of 450 non-US staff will be let go), CEO Owen Van Natta pinpointed the global offices he considers dispensable. He released a statement saying that while the London, Berlin and Sydney offices will be preserved, MySpace will look to “restructure” the offices in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, and Spain and plans to close four offices all together. Considering Facebook’s massive growth both internationally and now in the U.S., we thought it would be instructive to compare the number of unique visitors to Facebook and MySpace in each of the countries which MySpace has identified for layoffs and restructuring. All together, the countries account for only about 15 percent of MySpace’s global unique visitors (see chart at right). But more tellingly, in practically every single country where layoffs are coming, Facebook has already won. The graphs below speak for themselves but here are a few numbers as well (all from comScore). In India, Facebook had 6.4 million unique visitors in May, compared to 848,000 unique visitors to MySpace. In Argentina, Facebook had 5.5 million unique visitors in May, compared to 611,000 unique visitors to MySpace. In Spain, 7.2 million for Facebook, versus 1.5 million for MySpace. MySpace’s growth has been stagnating for quite some time now. Worldwide monthly page views for MySpace declined from 47.4 billion a year ago to 38 billion in April, a 20% drop. In that same period Facebook grew from 44 billion to 87 billion, a roughly 100% increase. MySpace’s user number growth has stalled out also, and developers are reporting that activity on MySpace is decreasing at a dramatic rate, as high as "half a percent a week." And in our most recent model of the true value of social networks, MySpace fell below Facebook, dropping from the top spot last year. Things aren’t going to get prettier for MySpace anytime soon. As Michael Arrington wrote in May, MySpace will receive its last “welfare payment” from Google (thanks to an advertising deal between News Corp. and Google struck in 2006), in 2010 and then it will be cut off. Under the terms of the agreement, MySpace will receive $300 million over the next year if the network makes certain search page view requirements. When the deal is over, MySpace will have a social network that costs half a billion dollars a year to run. But as shown above, page views are decreasing and with Google’s yearly infusions of money gone there is a strong likelihood that the News Corp. subsidiary will be unprofitable a year from now, even with all of these cuts. It appears that Van Natta is using the layoffs to trim expenses but we estimate 720 total worldwide layoffs would only amount to about $7 to 8 million in monthly expenses (assuming $11K per head, including payroll, benefits and overhead). MySpace could lay off its entire staff and still not be profitable. INDIA ARGENTINA SPAIN CANADA FRANCE SWEDEN ITALY MEXICO RUSSIA BRAZIL Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Zugara's Augmented Reality Dressing Room Is Great If You Don't Care How Your Clothes Fit Top
Augmented reality , or the blending of the real world with computer graphics on the fly, is one of the most exciting fields in tech right now. Unfortunately, there haven’t been many practical uses of the technology — we’ve seen some very impressive video game peripherals and a few Terminator-style phone overlays from companies like Layar , Sekai Camera , and Seer Android , but these still have a ways to go before they’ll hit the mainstream. Zugara , an interactive marketing agency, has built something a bit more practical for the time being. It’s put together the Webcam Social Shopper , offering a way to help you try on clothes online from the comfort of your bedroom. At least, it lets you overlay a static image on top of your body and pretend you’re wearing it. Which is sort of a start. From a technological standpoint, the application is pretty cool. While other similar clothing applications require you to upload a static image of yourself, the Zugara app uses your web cam, detecting where you’re standing in a room and adjusting the position of the overlain clothing appropriately. Even better: instead of having to return to your keyboard and mouse to try on a new outfit, you can simply move your arms above your head to navigate through the various clothing options (be sure to watch the video to see how it works). Now, it’s pretty obvious that this isn’t going to be particularly useful for figuring out how any item of clothing is actually going to look on you. The clothes are basically just images being pasted on top of your body, without any attention being paid to your proportions (it would be much more useful if the app could generate a 3D model of your body and adjust the clothing fit accordingly). On the other hand, it could be handy for figuring out which clothes might look good together. Clashing colors and patterns may be incredibly obvious to the well-trained eye of a veteran shopper, but for some people (read: me), a virtual fitting room could prove useful. Zugara is also trying to weave a social element into the application, offering examples of sharing outfit choices over Facebook or allowing friends to help choose outfits in real time, which could turn out to be the app’s real strength. At this point Zugara is describing this as an Alpha app — it hasn’t yet been integrated with any stores or brand sites, so you can’t try it out for yourself. But it won’t be surprising if we start seeing similar technology popping up at online stores soon. Even if it doesn’t work all that well for actually trying on clothes, the social component and novelty factor could make it appealing to stores anyway. Update : Zugara’s Jack Benoff comments below on the sizing issues and the goal of the project: -If you click on the link below you can check out more information about the app and our thinking behind it. It's important to point out that we aren't trying to replicate that moment when you walk out of a dressing room, but rather that moment when you find an article of clothing on a rack and you hold it up to yourself. It's that moment of turning to a friend (or the mirror) and say something to the effect of: "What do you think?" -As you will see in the blog post below. Future executions will allow for a user to enter their measurements and get a "fitted" image. Sizing though, tends to be specific to the retailer/brand and will need to be "tailored" (i.e. integrated) accordingly. You can find more information on the project here . Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Mobile Data: IBM Tags Wimbledon With Seer Android Top
Some of the most promising set of mobile apps being built today use a cell phone’s camera and GPS to overlay data onto the real world. In other words, instead of looking at a browser, you look through the camera lens at the real world around you and information is layered on top of the view projected on the small screen. (It’s not just a viewfinder, you know). Last year at TechCrunch 50, the Sekai Camera demo from Japan that does this blew away the audience. More recently, Layar showed us similar augmented reality apps for the Android phone. Now IBM has its own augmented reality mobile app for Wimbledon called Seer Android (see demo in the video above). In order for these apps to be worthwhile, people first have to do the hard work of tagging the world , otherwise the apps have no data to pull down and display. Since it is the technology provider of the tennis tournament, IBM decide to tag Wimbledon. Using the Android G1’s compass, camera, and GPS, IBM’s app shows pop-up windows whenever it recognizes whatever you are pointing at: tennis courts (along with who is playing), bathrooms, buses, and so on. It can tell the user how far away a court or food concession stand is, and can stream in live data such as scores. As you look through the camera, Seer Android essentially reads the environment and pumps that data into the app. It is very cyborg. But the app only works at Wimbledon. It is location-specific, which brings us back to the challenge of tagging the world. For IBM, Seer Android is a cool way to demonstrate how much data they are collecting at Wimbledon. But as more of the world gets tagged with geo-coded data, this sort of mobile app will become more practical to use everywhere. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Gmail Makes Its iPhone Web Version More App-Like With Swipe Gestures Top
A lot of people complain about Gmail not having a native application on the iPhone. While it’s not clear if Apple will even allow that yet with the new iPhone 3.0 SDK, one thing that is becoming more clear: Soon it won’t need one. The reason is that its iPhone-optimized mobile version continues to get some killer features. The latest is the ability to use the swipe gesture to archive messages — yes, within the browser. Users of the iPhone’s native mail app will recognize and appreciate this functionality (though in that app it’s used to delete messages, not archive them). This follows the mobile version of Gmail gaining a floating toolbar that gives users easy access to certain functions no matter where they are on the screen. And soon, with full HTML 5 support, mobile Gmail will feature offline browsing of messages, which is perhaps the main reason people want a native app right now. This is all the more reason to become a Gmail Ninja . Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Google Wants You To Become A Gmail Ninja. Or Look Like A Huge Nerd Trying. Top
Gmail is far and away the best online email management system out there right now. But a lot of people still use it like a regular email service, never touching some of its power-features that can really help with email overload. So Google launched a new Tips area of the site today to serve as a reference point for how to become what it calls a “ Gmail Ninja. ” It breaks the tips down into “White belt,” “Green belt,” “Black belt,” and “Gmail master,” based on your level of expertise. While the White and Green belt stuff is mostly for neophytes, there are some good tips in there that you may have forgotten along the way while using Gmail. The later belts are the ones that contain some of the good stuff though, particularly some of the big keyboard and search shortcuts, that I always forget to use. Google has also made a PDF version of the list for you to print out and “pin to your wall,” which would undoubtedly draw a lot of ridicule, but could be useful. And if you really want to be ridiculed, if you’re one of the first 1,024 to fill out a form on this site, you’ll get a laminated version of the guide for free. If you miss out, you can still buy one for $1.25, which would bring yet more ridicule. Here’s an overview of the tips: White Belt Use stars to indicate a note is special. Reply by chat. Organize your email with labels. Clean up your inbox using “Move to” — it works just like folders. Search your mail instead of sorting. Archive messages to tidy up your inbox without deleting anything. Import your email and contacts from your old address. Spice up your inbox with a theme. Join forces to rid the world of spam. Green Belt Talk face-to-face with video chat. Use Tasks as a handy to-do list. Use filters to control the flow of incoming mail. Highlight important emails using filters and colored labels. Send email from your phone. Preview attachments without downloading them. Avoid email gaffes with Undo Send. Tell your friends what you’re up to with a status message. Never forget an attachment again. Tell everyone when you’ll be back with vacation responder. Nothing says “I’m excited” like a bouncing happy face emoticon. Black Belt Get through your mail faster with keyboard shortcuts. Use search operators to find the exact message you’re looking for. Filter your email with personalized email addresses. See which messages were sent right to you. Make Gmail go where the internet doesn’t. Quickly add multiple attachments to an email. Add “(EOM)” to the subject of one-liner messages. Set up canned responses instead of typing the same reply over and over again. Click less and watch more using YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, and Yelp previews. Use quick links to get anywhere in Gmail with one click. Send and archive in one step. Gmail Master Bring Google Calendar and Docs to Gmail. Send SMS text messages right from Gmail. Forget to sign out of a public computer? Sign out remotely. Personalize your RSS feeds in web clips. Access your mail via https. Search for superstars by name. Use Gmail on your own domain. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
LinkedIn Turns Industry White Papers Into Ads Top
Industry white papers, in general, are dull reading—unless you need a piece of information in one of them to do your job. Then you’ll pay almost anything (i.e. expense it) to get your hands on the white paper you need. Sometimes companies produce white papers and give them away for free, but they have a hard time finding the professionals who might be interested in whatever narrow topic the paper covers. Enter LinkedIn. It knows what industry you work in and your job title, making it easy to guess what kinds of white papers you might actually be interested in. The business networking site is testing a new feature that turns white papers into ads and presents them to the narrow group of professionals most likely to want to read them. LinkedIn members can get white papers for free, and in return sponsors get qualified leads. A few hours ago, CEO Reid Hoffman sent out a Tweet saying that he “downloaded my first whitepaper from Linkedin.” He linked to this white paper from VMware and Intel titled “VMware vSphere™ and Intel® Xeon® Processor 5500 Series: Delivering the IT Infrastructure of Tomorrow – Today.” (You can only see it if you are signed in). Before letting you download the paper, it asks for your contact information and whether you “have a budgeted project.” In other words, the price of the white paper is that you basically agree to be contacted by the company. This is standard practice on company-run sites and sites like IDG and Bnet where they distribute their own white papers, but it seems like they will have better luck finding takers on LinkedIn. I contacted Hoffman to ask if this is a new feature. He responded via e-mail: Yes, it’s a new feature in our advertising program. Essentially: Linkedin is where professionals search for people and information to accomplish business tasks. As such, whitepapers are valuable information for professionals in particular jobs and doing specific tasks. So, Linkedin has deployed an initial system for matching whitepapers to professionals that we will be further developing over the next couple of quarters. If someone downloads a white paper on VMware and Intel, is that worth more than someone clicking on an ad? It certainly is a bigger commitment. LinkedIn expects to get $40 to $100 per lead. Soon LinkedIn will put up a white paper directory, and LinkedIn users will be able to spread them viraly by sharing them with their network. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
SitePoint Spins Off Website Marketplace As Flippa, Upsets Users Top
SitePoint , the popular marketplace where you can buy and sell entire websites, is turning its marketplace tab into a new standalone site called Flippa , and users are not happy. Having “outgrown its tab” on the information portal for web professionals, the marketplace is launching in public beta as Flippa. In the blog post announcing the launch, the company lists 10 new features, conveniently leaving the most apparent one for last: a new pricing model. Since comments are closed for that particular blog post, we took a look at the forum entry on SitePoint where the spin-off was announced, and couldn’t help noticing users seem to be quite upset by the move. While the migration of users’ entire auction history, bidding history and feedback rating was done automatically, several users are up in arms about the fact that they received no notice of the move prior to the actual execution. The new pricing model—which includes a success fee of 5% of the sale price for SitePoint with every successful transaction that gets closed (capped at $499)—is also a topic of lively discussion. Some messages from users: —This is a really bad move guys. I hate it so much. Now do I have to create a new username / password? You had a good thing going at Sitepoint. Please listen to your customers here and revert. Flippa…. what a stupid name, and stupid design. I doubt I’m going to use Flippa, and prob will start using DP more from now. Guys… seriously… think about what your customers want. We want the old Sitepoint Auctions back. —Just to add to everyone elses posts: I’ve been using the site point marketplace for along long time and I truly don’t understand why this has been created? The success fee is laughable - 5% of the winning bid? Are you kidding me? I won’t be buying or listing one single site on flippa - what a deadset ripoff, you guys are making Aussies look bad! So the success fee is going to increase prices of ALL sites listed and decrease the number of sites listed. Sounds like a great idea, wish i’d thought of it. —I don’t like the move to flippa. At first I thought I had a virus taking me to some other site. Need to revert back to the old listing format. Looks like I’ll be spending less time here now. —I regularly list websites on the SitePoint marketplace - more websites then 99% of the crowd there. When I first got the email I opened the website and I was horrified, the domain horrible, the design worse - many people think that yeah yeah design might be a preference but when it interferes with usability thats a problem especially if your talking about millions of dollars worth of sales. Splitting up the advertise your services / and the websites was also a horrible move. By doing so you nearly nulled the traffic on advertise your services and listing there is now pointless. The website sales traffic is what drove those listings to the point where they were slightly worth the price. Plenty more where that came from. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
TripIt Goes Pro, Launches Premium Flight Monitoring And Alerts Top
TripIt is one of those great services that actually manages to make life easier — just submit your travel confirmation Emails, and the site generates a comprehensive itinerary. It’s made Michael’s list of products he can’t live without for two years running, and is quickly gaining fans among frequent travelers. That’s all well and good, but until now the service hasn’t really had much of a revenue model beyond advertising. Today, that changes: the company is launching TripIt Pro , a collection of premium features that is sure to appeal to a wide range of road warriors. The first major feature offered by TripIt Pro is enhanced flight monitoring. TripIt will keep tabs on any delays, cancellations, and gate changes for every flight in your itinerary, and send you an SMS message to alert you as soon as there’s a change (you can also choose to receive reminders for check-in 24 hours before your flight). TripIt co-founder Scott Hintz ackowledges that some airlines offer similar notification services, but says that you have to set these up for every carrier you fly on. With TripIt, you only have to sign up once for it to work across all airlines. The service can also recognize when a delayed flight you’re on may cause you to miss a connecting flight, and alerts you to any alternative flights leaving from the same airport (TripIt also knows how many seats are available on each flight, so it won’t suggest any full ones). Of course, you’ll have to still go through your airline’s booking agent and ask to be placed on one of these flights, but Hintz says that generally if you can ask for a specific flight with available seats, these agents are more likely to help you out. Another new feature is the ‘Inner Circle’, which streamlines the service’s sharing functionality. Before now you’ve been able to share an itinerary with friends, but there hasn’t been a way to designate someone as a permanent buddy who can always see your plans (Hintz says users often wind up having to re-share plans with spouses and close friends for every trip they take). With Inner Circle, you’ll be able to grant permanent access to a select group of friends. Finally, TripIt is adding a new point tracking service for your frequent traveller points. The service keeps tabs on airlines, hotels, and some car companies, presenting your points in a single interface. TripIt isn’t the first service to do this, but Hintz says it’s been one of the site’s top three most requested features. TripIt Pro is going to cost $99 per year, but the site is offering a special introductory rate of $49/year for anyone who signs up by July 31st. And if you sign up at the cheaper rate, the site will offer the cheaper $49/year renewals for life. Frequent travelers are always looking for a way to take the burden out of flying, and now that they’ll no longer be able to pay $199 to skip airport security lines, this might prove a good alternative for reducing those headaches. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Qik For Android Alpha Leaks, Immediately Hits The Market Top
Uh-oh. Looks like the race for live video streaming on Android is on. When we got footage of Kyte running on Android last week after hearing next to nothing on the matter from the competitors, we guessed that it might be the first mobile streaming app to go live on the platform. Turns out, Qik has had something up their sleeve - and it just slipped right out. We’re not quite clear on all of the details yet, but an early Alpha version of Qik’s Android application has become available. Read the rest of this post >> Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
JAJAH Connects 1 Billionth Call, Courtesy Of Yahoo Voice Top
VoIP service provider JAJAH just recently turned three years old and is today announcing a more important milestone: according to the heavily-funded startup, the one billionth call connection on the JAJAH platform was made some time ago. Unsurprisingly, that call was actually made using Yahoo’s Voice service , which is powered by JAJAH after both companies forged a major partnership for VoIP services in April last year. JAJAH CEO Trevor Healy says the service has attracted 25 million users since its launch , which means every user has on average made 40 calls through the company’s IP telephony platform if we use back-of-the-envelope calculations. By comparison, rival Skype boasts over 405 million registered users globally and in a recent press release claimed people have made more than 100 billion minutes worth of free Skype-to-Skype calls alone. Other competitors include Jaxtr , Truphone and Nimbuzz . If you’re interested: the 1 billionth call was attributed to San Francisco resident Ila Vasudev Zeff, a 29 year-old woman who was calling her mother in India. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
The Government Comes Through For Tesla With A $465 Million Loan For Its Electric Sedan Top
In an announcement today at Ford’s research center in Dearborn, Michigan, the U.S. Secretary of Energy will be giving details about the first loans to come out of the government’s $25 billion program to help auto manufacturers. Ford got a $5.9 billion loan, but Tesla Motors , Silicon Valley’s electric car manufacturer, is receiving $465 million from the program. The money will go towards completing the development of its Modern S sedan and its electric power trains, which are being licensed by other car makers such as Mercedes . Last month, Mercedes’ parent company Daimler also invested $50 million for a 10 percent stake in Tesla. That brought the total debt and equity invested in the company to more than $200 million. Now, with the government loan, that brings the total capital raised to $700 million. If the government is going to be giving out loans to help car makers produce more fuel-efficient vehicles, it is good to see some of that money trickle down to helping electric cars get off the drawing table and into driveways. Tesla plans to use $365 million of the loan to accelerate the production of its Model S sedan, and the remaining $100 million for its electric power train manufacturing plant in California, for which its is in the final stages of negotiating a lease. At the tail-end of a long blog post yesterday responding to allegations in a lawsuit by Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard, Tesla CEO Elon Musk reveals that the company is on track to hit profitability next month as it ramps up production of its all-electric Roadster sports car. He also writes that the company has received more than 1,000 pre-orders for the Model S sedan, up from 500 in the first week . At about $50,000 after a tax credit, the Model S will be about half the price of the Roadster. In the post, he explains how the Roadster made possible the sedan: Tesla is sometimes criticized for the fact that our first car is relatively expensive, implying we thought there was a shortage of sports cars for rich people! Obviously, the transition to electric cars can only occur if they are affordable. However, a low volume and fairly costly product like the Roadster is the only realistic initial option for a small startup trying to create breakthrough technology. New technology in any field takes a few versions to optimize before reaching the mass market and in this case it is competing with 150 years and trillions of dollars spent on gasoline cars. I want to be clear, though, that we are trying to get there as soon as possible. My main reason for putting so much time and money into helping create Tesla is to speed up the transition to electric cars. This was not a case of rank ordering likely return on investment and concluding that the auto industry was the easiest way to make money! While I'm confident that Tesla will turn out to have a good return for investors, building a car company has to be one of the hardest ways to make a buck. That $465 million loan should help. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
One Flight Closer to My Electric Plane Fantasy Coming True Top
I missed a lot of things while I was in Africa. There was an obsession with Facebook vanity URLs that still doesn’t quite make sense to me , the launch of a new iPhone that I still won’t buy because it doesn’t have a keyboard (cue the Apple fanboy trolls) and–most exciting to me but most under reported– a milestone in electric aviation . I fantasize about electric, supersonic planes the way others fantasize about Hollywood celebrities or, I guess, new iPhones. It’s the result of spending as much as 30-hours per trip on dirty, fuel-spewing, noisy planes with broken entertainment systems and bathroom doors that don’t always lock. (Did I mention I fly coach?) Earlier this month, in Turin, Italy, Italian astronaut Maurizo Cheli set a world record for speed for a 100% electric plane at 155 mph. That’s still slow compared to commercial jets, but remember when electric cars only went a few feet and looked like go-karts? It’s progress, right? The promise is a bit more exciting than the actual video, but here it is anyway. We now return you to regularly scheduled Twitter, Facebook and iPhone news. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Web-Based Productivity Suite Zoho Now Integrated With Microsoft SharePoint Top
Zoho Suite, a web-based software suite comprised of document, project and invoicing management tools, has launched an add-on that allows Zoho Office to integrate with Microsoft SharePoint. Zoho users can now create new documents and save them to SharePoint in MS Office formats, view existing documents within SharePoint using Zoho apps, and edit existing documents with Zoho Apps and save them back to SharePoint. The new add-on also provides collaborative editing functionality in Zoho with the integration with SharePoint. Zoho says the add-on costs $2/user/month on an yearly subscription or $3/user/month for monthly subscription. Zoho says that the seamless integration between Zoho and SharePoint will help businesses who want the best of both worlds: the ability to collaborate on documents on the web while still keeping data behind the firewall. If you have SharePoint installed in your intranet behind your corporate firewall, your documents in Zoho are saved back to your SharePoint server behind your corporate firewall leaving no data on Zoho Servers. As we've written in the past, Zoho is an innovative document management tool, and includes easy access thanks to support for mobile, Google and Yahoo IDs and group sharing across different app features. Zoho knows that it is going to have to fight an uphill battle to keep users from flocking to the web-based applications offered by companies with a vast reach (Google, Adobe, etc.) which is why these sort of integrations are helpful to the software’s success as an application suite. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Ooma Gets $14 Million, Survival Looks Like A Real Possibility Top
VoIP startup Ooma has raised another $14 million in venture capital, we’ve heard from multiple sources, increasing the total amount of capital the company has raised to $56 million . This most recent round of financing was led by existing investor Worldview Technology Partners and was a restructuring that wiped out earlier investors who chose not to participate in this round. The company was really on the ropes and down to its last few dollars, says one source. But sales, particularly at Best Buy, are brisk and the company should reach profitability with this new round of financing, he added. Ooma first launched two years ago as a new type of consumer VoIP product. But a complicated business model (expensive hardware, free service) made it confusing for consumers to compare to competitive offerings from Vonage and others. But customer reviews were very positive, and the company brought in seasoned sales executive Rich Buchanan , previously at Sling Media . Best Buy started selling the devices and have been very successful in moving them off the shelves. The company also announced a new handset product called the Telo at CES earlier this year. It is not yet available for purchase. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
MySpace To Terminate 2/3 Of International Staff Top
MySpace is planning to lay off 300 of its 450 non-U.S. employees, it announced this morning, confirming our earlier report . Just one person in three gets to keep his or her job. The company has now announced that over 700 of it’s 1,800 total employees have been or will be laid off - 30% of U.S. staff last week , and 66% of non-U.S. staff today. The company will not confirm whether Managing Director Travis Katz is still with the company (we reported earlier this evening that he has left the company). Update: sources at MySpace are saying that Katz will remain with MySpace and that “his role hasn’t changed.” The company will still not respond to an on-the-record request for comment about Katz. TechCrunch Europe has the press release and email from MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta to what’s left of staff. The company also says that it will close “at least 4 of its offices outside the United States,” adding “Upon completion of the proposed plan, London, Berlin, and Sydney would become the primary regional hubs for MySpace's international operations. Under the proposed plan, MySpace would place all existing offices in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, and Spain under review for possible restructure. MySpace China, a locally owned, operated, and managed company, and MySpace's joint venture in Japan would not be affected by the proposed plan.” The email to employees notes absurdly that the “restructuring steps we have taken have laid the groundwork for an exciting new chapter of innovation for MySpace” (with nearly half of MySpace staff now laid off, the few that are left are thinking about everything except innovation). He also says “I look forward to working with you all and speaking with you in the coming days.” I’m sure he’ll get something less than a warm reception. From: Owen Van Natta To: FIM MySpace All Subject: IMPORTANT: PROPOSED INTERNATIONAL RESTRUCTURE Importance: High Everyone, Last week we made a number of changes to MySpace's domestic structure in order to create a leaner, more nimble organization. Today, we are announcing the next step in our overall restructuring effort - a proposal to streamline our operations abroad. Unlike our recent domestic restructuring announcement, what we are announcing today is a formal proposal we intend to implement, rather than an executed plan. As required by laws in countries where we operate, we will not implement the plan until we have consulted with potentially affected employees. As a result, even though the plan we are proposing today would apply to all international divisions of the company, a finalized international restructuring will be put into action over a period of days. Similar to our domestic restructuring, our international plan is designed to rein in growth in staff and expenses that we cannot sustain. Our proposal would reduce MySpace's international staff from 450 employees to approximately 150 employees and close at least 4 of our offices outside the United States. Upon completion of the proposed plan, London, Berlin, and Sydney would become the primary regional hubs for MySpace's international operations. Under the proposed plan, MySpace would place all existing offices in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, and Spain under review for possible restructure. MySpace China, a locally owned, operated, and managed company, and MySpace's joint venture in Japan would not be affected by the proposed plan. We are focusing on London, Berlin, and Sydney for two very simple reasons: (1) these are markets where we have a lot of MySpace users as well as the resources to allow us to compete effectively and (2) these are major international commerce centers where a robust MySpace presence can help our company develop new and innovative business partnerships. As with the domestic changes we made last week, these proposed international reductions and eliminations will be extremely challenging – professionally and personally. These are difficult decisions and they are essential to our financial well-being and the re-establishment of our overall growth strategy. Our goal to tap into as many international markets as possible drove us to create too many offices around the globe, and with them came inefficiencies. Under the new plan, we will refocus our efforts on regional business partnerships and integration in a smaller number of territories, while retaining a robust international presence. We remain steadfast in our commitment to reaching a global audience. The last two weeks have been tough for everyone. The employees who leave us played an important role in the successes of MySpace in these international markets, and I thank them for their hard and dedicated work. The restructuring steps we have taken have laid the groundwork for an exciting new chapter of innovation for MySpace. I look forward to working with you all and speaking with you in the coming days. Thank you, Owen Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Ever Wondered What The Most Common Names On Facebook Are? Here's A List Top
With well over 200 million registered users , Facebook is undeniably a giant on the web , and one that is sitting on an enormous amount of raw data about individuals and demographically selected groups at that. While private profiles are not even always as private as we’d like to assume - something we’ve learned yesterday and multiple times in the past as well - there’s a lot of data that you can extract from what’s openly available to the public. For example: what are the most common names used on the social network? Well that’s exactly what social search solutions provider Rapleaf wanted to find out, so they crawled no less than 100 million public Facebook profiles for unique names and compiled three lists : most common first names, last names and combinations of both. There are little surprises to be found in the lists. Over 1 million of scanned profiles has ‘John’ as first name, making it the most popular on Facebook, although chances are ‘Michael’ should come out on top if ‘Mike’ as a nickname wouldn’t be counted as unique. Out of the ten most common first names, only number 10 is female (Maria), although ‘Chris’ could account for men or women alike. The top 10: First Name Count 1. John 1,037,972 2. David 966,439 3. Michael 798,212 4. Chris 647,966 5. Mike 535,065 6. Mark 526,198 7. Paul 511,504 8. Daniel 504,203 9. James 494,945 10. Maria 484,693 The last names list is more representative of Facebook's global reach than the list above, and is led by another American household name: Smith. Surnames like ‘Lee’ are popular worldwide, and the numbers 7, 8, 9 and 10 are all outspoken Hispanic names that are very common throughout the whole of Latin-America and Spain. Top ten: Last Name Count 1. Smith 1,049,158 2. Jones 520,943 3. Johnson 440,978 4. Lee 392,709 5. Brown 375,444 6. Williams 372,486 7. Rodriguez 328,984 8. Garcia 311,477 9. Gonzalez 277,987 10. Lopez 269,896 The list of top 10 full names commonly used on Facebook is believed to be comprised of both real and fake accounts, considering the fact both ‘John Smith’ and ‘Jane Smith’ made it on there. Again, little surprises in the top 10: Full Name Count 1. John Smith 75,980 2. Joe Smith 14,648 3. Bob Smith 13,846 4. Mike Smith 11,199 5. Juan Carlos 10,254 6. Jane Smith 10,023 7. Mike Jones 10,014 8. David Smith 9,322 9. Sarah Smith 8,534 10. James Smith 8,397 Rapleaf offers the top 100 lists as CSV download, but we’ve made it easier for you to consult them by creating separate pages with the full lists: Top 100 Most Common First Names On Facebook Top 100 Most Common Last Names On Facebook Top 100 Most Common Full Names On Facebook Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Conduit Launches Marketplace For Toolbar Content Top
Conduit, a service that enables web publishers to easily create their own toolbars for Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox, is opening up its platform to allow for distribution opportunities. Conduit’s SaaS tool lets companies create and distribute their content and products on a custom community toolbar. Conduit, which we have covered previously here and here, has amassed a network of more than 200,000 web publishers who distribute their toolbars to more than 60 million users. Conduit is now letting publishers add other publishers’ content to each others toolbars via a marketplace. And consumers can also get additional content for their Conduit toolbars from the marketplace or the website of anyone who is a Conduit user. The toolbar can be a useful marketing tool for companies because it helps market brands by showing logos to users every time they surf the net. And now multiple brands can tap into this potential.The offerings include major brands such as Fox News, Lufthansa, Major League Baseball, Greenpeace and more (disclosure: TechCrunch also uses Conduit). To date, Conduit has raised close to $10 million in funding and is currently cash-flow positive. Of course, nowadays everyone has a toolbar and space in the browser is competitive landscape. MySpace, Yahoo, Digg and many others are all either upgrading their toolbars or creating toolbars for their brands. But with its white label offering that can now distribute brands more widely, Conduit may have found the opportunity to help companies cross-promote. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
iPhone In-App Purchases Already Leading To The Dreaded Two Words: Bait And Switch Top
Since it launched a year ago, Apple’s App Store has had a series of successes ( 50,000 apps , a billion downloads , transforming the market ), but also some failures. While plenty of people talk about the abundance of junk apps in the store, I have never seen that as a problem since no one is forcing anyone to download them — and believe it or not, some people actually do, for whatever reason, love fart apps. But one real problem has been Apple’s uneven policy when it comes to the acceptance and rejection of apps into the store. It looks like we should be seeing some improvements on that front shortly, as the new iPhone 3.0 software has parental controls built-in which will restrict kids under a certain age from using certain apps. While that won’t solve some silly rejections , it should ease the burden on app screeners having to look closely at apps that are clearly intended for a mature audience. So, I’m hopeful on that front. But there’s a new potentially troublesome front opening up as well: Bait and switch apps. Yes, the old practice of luring customers with a shiny price, only to reveal the real cost after (in this case, the download), could find its way to the App Store, thanks to in-app purchases. Let me be clear: I think in-app purchases are potentially the most exciting thing about the new iPhone 3.0 SDK for developers. I believe it will mean a boatload of money for a great many of them as well as Apple, which takes its 30% cut. But where there is money to be made, there is money to be taken. And we’re likely to see a rise in apps that seem priced way too good to be true — because they are, until you download them. Now, this won’t be a huge problem because no app can force you to make an in-app purchase. But it could potentially clutter up the store with these falsely cheap apps. And depending on how misleading Apple allows some apps to be with the in-app purchases, we could see a bunch of people buying stuff they didn’t really want to be buying. One of the first potentially troubling apps in this regard for the iPhone 3.0 software launched last week, Gokivo [ iTunes Link ]. The app sells for $0.99, but that doesn’t give you access to the biggest selling point of the app: Turn-by-turn navigation. That will set you back another $9.99 a month. Now, to be fair, Gokivo does give you plenty of other features for your $0.99, but as you can see on the App Store review board, most people believed they were getting the turn-by-turn functionality with that money as well. Part of that was Gokivo’s somewhat tricky wording when the app first launched. That wording has been cleaned up now, but it’s still not good enough. Basically now you have a series of asterisks on the app page sidebar denoting the most important part of the app: That it’s $9.99 a month to use the turn-by-turn features. Apple should create an obvious way to see that these type of apps feature in-app purchase components as a key part of them. Hell, there should be a prominent label any app that uses any in-app purchases, so consumers know what they’re potentially getting into. This should definitely be on the App Store page for these apps, but it should also probably pop-up when you go to download the app itself. Developer-made text asterisks are not going to cut it. But it’s probably unfair to pick on Gokivo, because it is just the first of many turn-by-turn GPS apps that are likely to hit the App Store. And all will likely have the same type of pricing structure. It make sense, most GPS apps/units do charge a monthly fee, so why shouldn’t the iPhone versions? That’s why I think this is just all about the way Apple highlights these apps. But that’s a reasonable example. Just wait until the first $0.99 games come out that feature basically no content for that price, and force you to buy additional content to gain any experience. Gaming is the obvious one, but really, it could be any app that does this. And I think those are coming. Maybe Apple expects its app screeners to look to make sure all apps have an appropriate level on content for the $0.99 price point. But that’s a foolish dream given what we’ve seen so far from these screeners. And what else is a bit annoying to a number of developers I’ve talked to, is that Apple is forcing you to charge at least $0.99 to have in-app purchases as an option. As I understand it, this is because Apple wants to maintain a section of the App Store that is totally free. But by doing that, it’s sort of creating situations like the Gokivo app, where it appears like they’re charging only $0.99 upfront to be deceptively cheap — that’s probably not the case, but it looks like it. And that’s a problem. Because it could make a lot of apps look like classic bait and switch ones. And why do that, when real bait and switch ones are coming too? Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Socialtext Goes Freemium With Socialtext Free 50 Top
Socialtext offers a compelling package of Enterprise 2.0 services, but it has a problem. While it can talk all it wants about how great its products are, the real selling point is getting customers to use them for themselves. While free-trials work somewhat, the time constraints are limiting. So that’s why Socialtext is moving into the freemium market with its new SocialText Free 50 offering. Basically, Socialtext Free 50 allows companies to sign-up and get many of Socialtext’s services for free, for up to 50 users. That includes the service’s social networking, wiki, site building and messaging tools. The only constraints are that you’re limited to one wiki workspace (paid accounts offer unlimited), and there is no support beyond the basic online variety. “We think we picked the right line of what can we give away,” Socialtext co-founder Ross Mayfield tells us. So, you’re pretty much free to open those up to 50 accounts and let the users roam around as they wish. And if you determine you need more accounts, or just more options, there’s obviously an easy path to upgrade. The paid service starts at $6-a-month per user for a hosted plan, or larger companies can opt to pay $1,000 per month, plus $1 or $5 per user based on if they want hosted or on-site capabilities. The full pricing breakdown is here . Alongside the Socialtext Free 50 launch, the company is also opening up the beta of its new SocialCalc spreadsheet service. SocialCalc’s development was lead by Dan Bricklin, the co-createor of VisiCalc — the first spreadsheet program that was ever made for PCs. It’s been private beta testing for a little while now, but is ready for public testing, Mayfield says. The general release is expected at the end of Q3. As you might imagine, SocialCalc is a social spreadsheet service. But Mayfield feels it bests competitors such as Google Spreadsheets and EditGrid, because they’re doing more than just reverse engineering the dominant spreadsheet client, Excel. SocialCalc was built to make group editing simple, and to eliminate potential conflict issues when multiple people are editing a document. It offers a way to “work with structured data in an unstructured way,” as Mayfield puts it. And, unlike Google Spreadsheets, SocialCalc can be deployed behind a firewall. Perhaps more importantly, SocialCalc ties into all of Socialtext’s other offerings (though, unfortunately won’t be included in the Socialtext Free 50 offering as of right now). We’ve been seeing a resurgence of the freemium model in recent months. It seems to be working pretty well for some consumer-facing products like Pandora, which had a nice offering a couple months ago. It will be interesting to see how it works in the enterprise sphere. CubeTree, another social enterprise offering, launched with the model last month as well. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
MySpace International Head Travis Katz Is Out (Updated) Top
Update: MySpace sources now say Katz may still be at the company, although 2/3 of international staff will be terminated . More bad news at MySpace. As we await what are likely to be significant cuts in MySpace’s international headcount, MySpace International managing director Travis Katz is out, we’ve heard from a source in the UK. MediaWeek is also reporting this. Katz joined MySpace in early 2006 as Vice President International, taking a SVP and Managing Director title in October 2006. He is responsible for all non-US operations for MySpace, IGN and other Fox Interactive Media properties. He grew staff from 2 to more than 400 in a span of 2 years. How many of those 400 international employees will shortly be following? We’ll likely know soon . International employees were spared from the 30% layoffs last week due to legal requirements for notice in some countries, particularly in Europe. But the clock is still ticking on those employees. I almost interviewed Katz at Davos earlier this year, but he was not available at the time of the interview. Former CEO Chris DeWolfe went solo . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 

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