Friday, June 19, 2009

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I Have A Crush On ManBabies.com Top
I post this because it’s Friday, because it’s freaking hilarious, and because it could be a killer last-minute Father’s Day gift . Go visit ManBabies.com right now. I cannot stop laughing. Babies are cute, and men are usually normal looking — but when you swap their heads, the results are truly terrifying. ManBabies does just that, both by creating its own images and accepting user submissions for photos that are then voted on by the community. And you can easily share all these pictures via the normal means: Twitter, Facebook, email and you can even embed them. And they’ll even take your photographs and do the swap for you, if you’re willing to pay them — $15 per Manbaby photo. If you’re interested in submitting your picture, just like Fight Club, the first rule is the most important one: 1. The picture MUST have both a man and a baby. Man + baby = ManBaby. Get it? Below find a few of my favorites: Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Twicsy Is A Killer And Kind Of Creepy Way To Search Pictures Shared On Twitter Top
I don’t know about you, but when I see a link to a picture shared on Twitter, I almost always click on it. Sharing images in real-time is a particularly interesting use of the service. And now there’s a more interesting way to view these time-sensitive pictures with Twicsy . The service, launched by the social search engine Searchles , features a main page that is filled with image thumbnails. All of them are images shared over Twitter on either TwitPic or yFrog (two of the most popular Twitter picture sites, currently). The default is to show images from the past hour, but you can set different time intervals to change what images are shown. Hovering over any of them shows a larger version of the image, along with some details about it, like its link and tags. If you click on any of these thumbnails, you’re taken to a page that shows the image, shows who has tweeted about it, and images that Twicsy believes are related. These related images are shown based on contextual tags and user analysis, we’re told. Interestingly, Twicsy doesn’t use Twitter’s search API to find these images. Instead, it indexes all tweets with image links and populates them from that. But perhaps the most useful feature of Twicsy is its own search functionality. For anything you query, Twicsy pulls up related images that have been shared on Twitter. You can sort these by time or by relevance. The results are pretty solid. As you might imagine, this service pulls up a lot of slightly personal pics, such as couples being all cutesy together. Since you don’t know any of them, it’s slightly creepy. But hey, if they don’t want those seen, they shouldn’t be sharing them over Twitter in the first place. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
YouTube Plays Nice With The Movie Industry, Puts Trailers In Their Own Channel Top
YouTube has launched a new directory for movie trailers. While YouTube has had movie trailers on its site from distributors in the past, Google’s video-sharing site has launched a new channel where official trailers are organized by “Latest,” “Popular,” “In Theatres,” and “Opening Soon.” Apple’s movie trailer platform has long been the most comprehensive and popular site in distributing online trailers . Hulu also provides a good amount of trailers on its site. Recently, YouTube launched a premium section with movies and TV shows from Crackle/Sony Pictures, CBS, MGM, Lionsgate, Starz, the BBC, Anime Network, Cinetic Rights Management, Current TV, Discovery, Documentary Channel, First Look Studios, IndieFlix, and National Geographic. A spokesman for YouTube told us there isn’t a a lot of content on the new trailers site because its new but this will be the main portal for content partners to upload movie trailers. He added, “Trailers have always been popular on the site, and we got a lot of feedback from users and partners and there should be a place on the site specifically for them.” YouTube also launched a few new search options today today, including the WonderWheel, a search feature Google added in May. to its main search engine. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
A Second Opinion On Palm's Pre App Numbers Top
The Pre is emerging as a polarizing device, even more so than the G1 (which everyone agreed was kind of beta ), probably because it's the closest thing to a legitimate threat that the iPhone has faced. Who wouldn't get defensive? With strong sales in its first two weeks and an entirely new OS for developers to do their thing with, it's strong out of the gate but controlled — because the jockey is holding the reins tight. Palm didn't expect a dynamite launch or a million app sales in a week; what they've got so far is, if we can believe what they say, pretty much what they'd hoped for. Of course, the TechCrunch network is a treasure trove (a rat's nest, some would say) of opinions, and we have been known to attack the Pre ( savagely and repeatedly ) despite our interest in it. The app sales numbers for the Pre need more context than a direct comparison to the iPhone App Store , but that is an important data point, so let's do it thoroughly.
 
Android Users Are Stickier Than iPhone Users Top
No, no - that headline wasn’t intended as commentary on the hygiene of Android users (though if a good chunk of the Android devotees I know are any indication, it very well could be. Zing!) Earlier this morning, mobile analytics group Flurry gave us an exclusive sneak peek at their Smart Phone Industry Pulse report for June. Flurry’s June report harvests data from 1,100 applications running across 4 platforms (iPhone OS, BlackBerry, JavaME, and Android) on over 40 million handsets, and sheds a bit of light on the usage habits (stickiness included) of smart phone users over the past few months. Read the rest of this post >> Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
In Its Rush To Offer A Persian Version, Did Facebook Violate Its Terms Of Service? Top
Yesterday evening, Facebook hurriedly launched a Persian (Farsi) version of the site for users in Iran. Following the past week’s events surrounding the Iranian elections and subsequent protests, Facebook felt that there was an immediate need to provide a Farsi version of the social network as an act of solidarity with the citizens of that country. But this recent move may be in violation of Facebook’s own terms of service. Clause 4.3 of Facebook’s terms of service states, “You will not use Facebook if you are located in a country embargoed by the U.S., or are on the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals.” A spokesman for the Bureau of Industry and Security, a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce, confirmed to us that there are currently five countries that the U.S. has imposed embargoes against: Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Syria, and Sudan. This was also confirmed by the U.S. Department of State . Many of these embargoed countries seem to have Facebook users in their respective countries. We also heard anecdotally from someone who lives in Cuba that Facebook can be used in there as well, although the U.S. has historically implemented strict embargoes against Cuba. Facebook doesn’t specify what exactly it means by “embargoes” (trade embargo or arms embargo, or both) or how strictly this rule is followed. As Facebook’s popularity grows internationally, perhaps the social network should take another look at its terms of service. Other Web companies such as AOL, Microsoft, and Google are reportedly banning users in embargoed countries from using instant messaging and other software. Twitter’s and MySpace’s terms of service make no similar mention to restricting users from embargoed countries. But Facebook may have a way out. It can apply for a a special export license if it can argue that its service promotes “independent activity intended to strengthen civil society,” which is a rule that is used with Cuba, according to Department of Commerce guidelines. We’ve contacted Facebook for a comment. We will update as soon as we hear back. Here’s the excerpt from Facebook’s Terms of Service: Photo Credit: Flickr/ Misterarasmus Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Want A Super Cheap iPhone 3G S? Bing It. Top
In honor of the iPhone 3G S launch today, I thought I’d point out a humorous little deal circulating around the web. Apparently, you can use Microsoft’s Cashback program that it runs through its search engine (and now through Bing ), to get a healthy 35% discount off of the device. Depending on your eligibility for AT&T’s subsidy ( more on that here ), that means you can get an iPhone 3G S 16 GB for $129.35, the 32 GB version for $194.35. Or, perhaps even better, an 8 GB iPhone 3G for $64.90. Yes, you can get a new iPhone for $65 — thanks to Microsoft. Crazy. Here’s is a full rundown of how to make it happen: New iPhone Contracts Only: 1. Visit ATT Wireless website and validate your email address with Premier. 2. Check your email and click the link to your ATT Premier Store. 3. Open a new tab with the same browser that your ATT Premier Store is open in. 4. Go to bing.com in the new tab and search “att wireless” 5. Click the 35% CashBack Sponsored Link 6. Sign into your CashBack account and get redirected to the main AT&T Wireless page. 7. In the top right enter the term “Premier” into the search bar. 8. Click the first link that reads “at&t premier login” 9. You will get directed to the same Premier store you have open in the original tab. 10. Congratulations, you are in the Premier store under the CashBack AT&T Site If you have an account with AT&T and you just want to make an upgrade or add a line: 1. Go to bing.com 2. Search ” ATT WIRELESS “. 3. Click the AT&T sponsored link, you will redirected (after you enter your email) to either the regular AT&T store or the Premier store depending on which account you have 4. Log in to your account and make your purchase. 5. The cashback will show up as “pending” after a couple of hours. 6. If it takes more than 48 hours for the cashback to show up, contact bing’s customer service then you will asked for your order number, method of payment( I attached my whole purchase order to the email): You cash will show up within hours I have no idea if this will actually work — it may go against AT&T’s rules for device — but if you’re seeing all the hype today and still looking to buy one online, it’s worth a shot. [via IntoMobile ] [Thanks Nick] Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
YouTube Search Gets The Wonder Wheel Top
YouTube search now has its own Wonder Wheel. The Wonder Wheel is a visual navigation tool which Google first rolled out on its main search page a month ago when it added some new search options to filter results in different ways. If you do a search on YouTube, which on its own would be the second largest search engine in the world, you will see a new option under the search box on the right called Wonder Wheel. If you click on that, your search term appears in a circle with lines branching out to related tags. Anytime you click on a related tag around the wheel, it creates a new wheel attached to the original with its own set of related searches. YouTube has also added some new features to its advanced search option, including the ability to search by video duration, location, and when it was uploaded. You can also search by category, keyword, video type, and for HD videos only, but those aren’t new. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Microsoft Tells Its Rude IE8 Campaign To "Get Lost" Top
For the past few days, we’ve been digging in pretty deep against Microsoft for its odd way it’s trying to push IE8 online. And we were hardly the only ones . Apparently, Microsoft was listening. Today, it has changed the worst of those campaigns, the “ Ten Grand Is Buried Here ” one, to remove the restriction that required you use IE8 to have a chance to win the money. Previously, there were 4 rules for the promotion, but Microsoft cut those in half, removing the ones that told you to get rid of your current browser and download IE8. More importantly, it removed the language that told users to “get lost” if they were using anything besides IE, and implying they were idiots for using any other browser. The Microsoft blog I Started Something tries to spin this as Microsoft just making changes to make more clear what it always intended for the campaign, saying that “get lost” was meant to be “get lost in the hunt" (both have since been removed from the site), and saying that, “The "it's not as stupid as it sounds" text in the footer was always in context of the "tell a friend" messaging. It implies that telling your friends about this competition is not a bad idea since you might not have the chance to follow or solve all the clues yourself. Some people obviously misinterpreted that.” Yeah, whatever. From what I’m hearing, Microsoft was not happy at all with Australian team for this campaign (the MSFT Aussies made it) and made the moves to correct it. Now anyone, using any browser, has a shot at the money. Smart move, though I’m not sure it will fulfill the original intention: To get more people to use IE8. But they’re still trying. The key line says, “How will you know if you’ve found it [the money]? It’s a cleverly concealed webpage you can view on Internet Explorer 8.” “Can” is the keyword there, you don’t need to use IE8, but you can , to view it. I think I will use Safari or Firefox to look for the money. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
More News On The Real Time Stream CrunchUp And First August Capital Tickets Top
We’ve been flooded with interest in the Real Time Stream CrunchUp to be held Friday, July 10 in conjunction with our 4th annual summer meet-up at August Capital (see ticket info below). Since we first announced the event two weeks ago, some major speakers have confirmed their attendance and the schedule is really starting to come together. Jack Dorsey, the inventor of Twitter, will be on hand to share his first-hand account of how the real time stream rose to prominence so fast and where it needs to go from here. Chris Cox, the director of product at Facebook, will have his own thoughts on the subject. And we might even stream Robert Scoble live via video from London just so that he can tell Dorsey all about FriendFeed . If Scoble needs help, FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor will be there to set him straight. We’ll kick things off with a morning discussion between two of the smartest investors focusing on real-time startups today: John Borthwick and Ron Conway. Both hold shares in Twitter, but their commitment to the real time stream goes way beyond that. Borthwick runs betaworks , a startup accelerator with investments in bit.ly , Summize (which was acquired by Twitter and now powers its real time search), TweetDeck , and most recently Twitterfeed , among others. Conway, an early investor in Google and more than 500 other startups, is now laser-focused on the real time opportunity as well. Come learn why they are scanning the horizon for real time investments and how they think these startups are poised to reshape the fabric of the Web. Individual panels will take a look at how emerging real time platforms are setting the stage for other companies to build applications on. These include not only other Websites, but also desktop and mobile clients. The stream is not bounded by the browser, as stream readers from TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop are proving. We’ll also do a deep dive into real time search with Collecta (which launched yesterday ), OneRiot, Topsy, and others. The stream will touch every aspect of the Web, from real time media (including social reporting and live video) to real time business (brand monitoring and rapid response when customers complain in the public stream). We’ll be exploring those realms as well. Interspersed throughout the day will be new product demos from Google, Salesforce, Seesmic, Andrew Baron’s Magma , and several stealth startups. (If you have an eye-opening demo or want to launch a product at the CrunchUp, please contact our conference producer, Asad Akbar . We have just a few spots left.) It is going to be a whirlwind day. TechCrunchIT editor Steve Gillmor and I will be hosting the event. We are calling it a CrunchUp because it will be highly participatory and real-time in every sense of the word. Our confirmed speakers include: Jack Dorsey , Twitter Chris Cox , Facebook Bret Taylor , Friendfeed Ron Conway , angel investor John Borthwick , betaworks Robert Scoble , Building43 Iain Dodsworth , TweetDeck Nick Halstead , Tweetmeme Loic Le Meur , Seesmic Joel Strellner , Twitturly Vipul Ved Prakash , Topsy Gerry Campbell , Collecta Kimbal Musk , OneRiot Andrew Baron , Magma Bhaskar Roy , Qik Eric Marcoullier , Gnip Additional speakers will be announced over the next three weeks. If you’ve got some real-time hotness you are ready to unleash on the world, contact us . CrunchUp Details The CrunchUp will take place on Friday, July 10, between 9:00 am and 4:30 PM at the historic Fox Theatre in Redwood City. CrunchUp tickets are $295 and include expedited check-in to the August Capital party. Get CrunchUp tickets here , courtesy of Eventbrite. The complete line-up is here . Big Time Thank Yous to Our CrunchUp Sponsors Tokbox is our offical video-chat sponsor of the CrunchUp. Thank you also to demonstration sponsors OneRiot and Loopt . And to Eventbrite for ticketing and MediaTemple for hosting. Please contact Jeanne Logozzo or Heather Harde to learn more about sponsorship packages and custom opportunities. Additional details here . August Capital Tickets August Capital year 4, can you believe it? Friday, July 10 5:30 - 10:00 pm 2480 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA We’re also releasing the first batch of 150 August Capital meet-up tickets here , courtesy of Eventbrite. Hurry, they’ll go fast. Tickets are $20 to help manage the guest list and minimize no shows. Due to extremely limited availability, we regret that tickets are non-transferrable and non-refundable. If you use your name to purchase multiple tickets, your guests must arrive with you to check in at the door. Additional tickets will be released over the next three weeks, so please be patient and stay tuned. As usual, there will be lots of start-up demos, giveaways, drinks and fun. CrunchUp tickets include expedited entry to the August Capital outing. Demo tables, photowalls, games and other sponsorships are available to make a memorable impression with MeetUp attendees. Please contact Jeanne Logozzo or Heather Harde to learn more about sponsorship packages and custom opportunities. Hope to see you there. UPDATE: August Capital Tickets SOLD OUT quickly as predicted. Watch for the next batch next week. Else, get a CrunchUp ticket and attend both events with us. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
MySpace Employees In Europe Await A Bloodbath Of Firings Top
Four days ago MySpace announced they were laying off 30% of their staff in the U.S. and promptly sent 400 employees packing. The announcement stated that the layoffs only applied to U.S. employees. That strongly indicated that the next up for termination were over 100 of its international employees, as it has almost 30 offices around the world MySpace in Europe covers 19 territories via 6 offices. Now we’re hearing from employees inside MySpace’s offices in Europe, who paint a black picture of hushed meetings between management, PR and HR teams. We’ve been told that MySpace PR people in London burnt candles late into last night, going over how to announce the re-structuring of MySpace internationally. Needless to say, requests for “recommendations” on LinkedIn between MySpace staff in Europe have soared, and we’ve even heard that estate agents have visited the expansive London offices, which suggests major downsizing there as well. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
A quick hands-on with the iPhone 3G S tethered to my Macbook Air Top
Yes, the major media figure on the Internet has an iPhone 3G S. On initial examination, I'd safely say that if you're planning on getting an iPhone with a new contract, go ahead. The price is right and the features are great. Everything on this phone is snappier - Maps especially - and the auto-focus and video uploads passed the wife test who said that this is what she's been looking for from the iPhone from the beginning. Looks like someone is going to have to upgrade someone.
 
Occipital Brings Seamless Barcode Scanning To The iPhone With RedLaser Top
Now that the new iPhone 3G S has a video camera, TechStars startup Occipital has released an update to its RedLaser app ( iTunes link, $1.99) which speeds up barcode scanning by not requiring you to first take a picture. Occipital claims that its “realtime barcode scanner” is the only one which works on phones with both autofocus (the new 3G S) and without (the older iPhone and iPod Touch). Other barcode scanning apps, such as ShopSavvy’s, can also take advantage of the autofocus camera on the 3G S, but can’t do on-the-fly scanning on the older models. Like other barcode scanning apps, many of which are free, RedLaser looks up price comparisons in an ever-growing product database. The utility of these apps is really determined by how good the back-end database is more than the scanning technology itself. But RedLaser is really more of a technology demo for Occipital, which is developing some some impressive mobile visual search technologies. The scanning technology is available to other developers through an SDK . Here is a video of the app in action: I am more excited by what Occipital has in the works for more sophisticated visual-recognition apps. Last year, at a TechStars Demo Day which Don Dodge covered for u s, he explained They can stitch photos together into a panorama, automatically label and tag photos, and construct 3D scenes from your photos. They can zoom in, fly over, step inside buildings…all based on simple photos stitched together into a 3D presentation. They find objects in your photos and link them to the same or similar objects in other photos and stitch them together. This is hard to explain with words, but the visual demo was amazing. Below is a video of a prototype visual-navigation app Occipital is working on. When can I get that on my iPhone? Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Tremors Gives You Twitter Vibrations About A Place Top
It's pretty obvious that wherever you are in the world, you're usually looking for the best bar, hotel or venue you can get for your money. And all the information is out there now, especially on live streams like Twitter. The problem is searching it and finding it. So if you could somehow match tweets to actual venues you could also use that data to rate the venue itself. The other thing you could do would be to create trust around the actual users which submitted the information. Now, mobile startup Rummble is trying to crack this nut with a beta product called Tremors . This is a new Twitter app which does the following: it attempts to match tweets to venues, based on a combination of fuzzy word matching, the general location the tweet came from and then a rough estimation of whether the Tweet was positive or negative about the venue. Right now it works in New York and Austin, Texas (the SXSW venue) and London. These are a natural fit as they are likely to have a critical mass of Twitter users - San Francisco is coming.
 
AT&T tethering to cost $55? Top
Gruber found some information that the AT&T tethering plan would cost $55 a month and suggests - but cannot confirm - that this will be in addition to the unlimited data plan already in place, potentially hitting the $85 per month for data. I, like him, find this outrageous and can only pray that this number will be more like $55 total. On the aggregate, traffic on wireless networks is fairly low. Major carriers built out quite a bit of bandwidth - they just needed the right customers, applications, and phones to use it correctly. When I was a telecom consultant back in 1999 we were already talking about 3G but no one wanted to start up the pipe for fear of - what? I don't know. Maybe they were afraid people would use it, downloading WAP pages willy-nilly.
 
Upcoming Android Apps: Kyte, Rummble, Google Books Reader (Video) Top
Always nice for a reporter to bump into a developer who builds mobile applications for startups and gives you a live preview and details of yet-to-be-announced stuff. No worries, he has permission to talk about the apps (he thinks). The man I'm talking about is Julián Moreno from development house Droiders , and he and his team have been hacking away at some fine apps for the Android platform: Kyte, Rummble, TransDroid and an ebook reader for the Google Books database.
 
That Was Quick: Veodia Acquires Screen Capturing Startup ScreenToaster Top
ScreenToaster , easily one of the best web-based screen recording tools out there, is now in the hands of enterprise video platform provider Veodia . The San Mateo, CA based company - backed by $8.3 million in venture capital - has acquired the former for an undisclosed sum and intends to integrate its offering in its enterprise video SaaS suite later this year. For Paris-based ScreenToaster’s founders Marco Fucci and Elie Curetti this is a remarkable feat, considering the fact that the startup only launched its service in private beta about 8 months ago. Perhaps its fast growth made Veodia notice the team might be onto something: ScreenToaster claims to have seen 40% month-to-month average growth in its user base since it launched its service publicly. Or it could be the French Connection: Veodia happens to be founded by its current CEO Guillaume Cohen, who hails from France. Regardless, this acquisition makes sense for Veodia. They can now complement their existing offering, which powers high-quality video services for the likes of Sun Microsystems, BEA and Stanford University, with a rapid way for these organizations to capture more basic screen recordings for product demos, tutorials etc. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Mobile 2.0 Europe: Video Interview With GetJar CEO Ilja Laurs Top
I’m here at the Mobile 2.0 Europe conference in sunny Barcelona and today had a great conversation with GetJar founder and CEO Ilja Laurs which I recorded and uploaded to our YouTube channel. GetJar, in case you don’t know, is a platform and device-agnostic central marketplace for mobile applications which Laurs bills as the world’s largest independent, open application store. The company is backed by $6 million in venture capital from Accel Partners and flirts with running a cash-flow positive operation. GetJar hosts over 45,000 applications, supports a community of more than 200,000 mobile app developers and sees over 36 million downloads of applications a month, with some of the top developers seeing downloads numbers ranging up to 20 million per unique app. Besides this enormous distribution scale, the two main other reasons mobile developers would decide to put their apps up in the GetJar marketplace, Laurs tells me, is that the company offers a range of services like stats, analytics, a beta testing environment and tools for distribution as well as a set of tools that enables developers to monetize their apps more efficiently. GetJar is currently testing a pilot program for in-application advertising together with some developers, and aims to release this solution publicly in the near future. Asked which platform he would choose to create apps for if he were an independent mobile app developer with limited resources, Laurs remains diplomatic and says a lot depends on the business model, target audience, type of application and what kind of developer you are. I was also curious about the effect the rise of all the different application stores from handset vendors and mobile operating system makers has had on GetJar as a destination site that pre-dates all these platforms by a margin. Laurs tells me the introduction of Apple’s App Store had an overall positive effect on the GetJar network, doubling its growth in a very short time, because it raised awareness about centralized application marketplaces in general and validated the mobile app development industry to a certain degree. Long term, he admits that there are negatives to the app store hype too, obviously the most important one being the increased competition. Check out the video if you’re curious in finding out which devices Laurs uses and what his personal favorite mobile application is. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
As Events Unfold In Iran, Facebook And Google Translate Quickly Add Persian Versions Top
In response to the events surrounding the Iranian election last week, Google and Facebook have both added the Persian language Farsi to their capabilities. The Persian version of Facebook will be available starting tonight. The Facebook blog post announcing the new version is here. Facebook says the Persian version was already being developed but it decided to unveil it because of the sudden increase in activity with the Iranian elections and protests. Facebook adds the disclaimer that the translation is still in rough form. If your browser is set to Farsi, you should automatically see the Persian version of Facebook. Facebook says that more than 400 Persian speakers submitted thousands of individual translations of the site. Google has also added Persian (Farsi) to Google Translate, making it easy to translate any text from Farsi into English and from English into Farsi. Google, like Facebook, says that the launch of the Persian translation was primarily due to the events taking place in Iran. And like Facebook, Google warns that the translation isn’t perfect. Google also invites people to click on the “contribute a better translation” link if they find a poor translation. It’s unclear what will happen with Facebook in Iran, under the current situation. FriendFeed was blocked and Twitter seems to be one of the main forms of social communication online in Iran. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
All In the Family: Sergey Brin Loans 23andme $10 Million And Google Ponies Up $2.6 Million Top
Google is still tightly intertwined with 23andme, a company that helps consumers understand and decipher their genomes. 23andme has raised another $2.6 million from Google out of a total $24.26 million it is trying to raise in a Series B round of funding, according to regulatory filings. This brings the total amount raised from this round to $13.6 million, after May’s $11 million funding round. At the time, Mohr Davidow Ventures divested its stake in 23andme after investing in a direct competitor Navigenics. The juiciest disclosure in the filing is that Brin loaned the startup an additional $10 million which is being converted into Series B preferred shares. Earlier in 2007, he had loaned the company $2.6 million which was repaid from the proceeds of Google’s subsequent $3.9 million stake in 23andMe in May, 2007. The debt was repaid after the Google investment. It appears that Brin once again had to dig into his own pocket to help keep the company afloat. The filing also says one of the investors in the Series B round in May was New Enterprise Associates, which also invested in 23andme’s Series A round. And it mentions that Google has entered into a lease agreement with 23andme, possibly for office space, but it is unclear what exactly is being leased. 23andme, which was co-founded by Sergey Brin's wife, Anne Wojcicki, raised $9 million in a Series A round of funding from Google, Genentech, New Enterprise Associates, and Mohr Davidow Ventures in 2007. The company maps consumers' DNA and helps them find information about their ancestry and their risks of getting certain diseases (Michael tried it last year). Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
The Pre App Catalog Is Tracking Way, Way Behind Apple's App Store. And It's Palm's Fault. Top
One month after the launch of the App Store in 2008, Apple had seen over 60 million downloads of its apps. The Palm Pre hasn’t been out for a month yet, but it’s about halfway there, so how close is it to that number? Not close at all. Not in the same ballpark. Not even in the same city. Palm’s App Catalog has seen roughly 666,000 app downloads in its first 12 days, according to the mobile analytics firm Medialets . And what’s worse is that the download momentum is slightly slowing down since the initial launch. So don’t be too surprised if one month after the launch, the App Catalog downloads are near 1 million. Yes, 1/60th of what the App Store was doing last year. So why is that? After all, reports are that the Pre itself is selling pretty wel l. Well, the reasons are fairly obvious, and are all Palm’s fault. Right now, there are only 30 apps in the App Catalog. That’s up from 18 at launch, but there have been no new ones in just about a week now. How many did the App Store have at launch last year? Over 500. And more importantly, the rate of expansion was massive — which led to those 60 million downloads in the first month. The reason the Pre has so few apps is because it has limited who has access to its webOS SDK. Even today, only select developers can get it, to start working on apps. And that’s better than it could have been — initially, Palm wasn’t planning to launch with an app store at all, according to Medialets . But that would have been a really bad move. The smartphone wars today are at least partially being measured by the various app stores, on top of actual device sales. While the iPhone is far from the most popular device around the world, the App Store has had over 1 billion downloads now, and has over 50,000 apps . If you were buying a phone today and had to choose between a device with 50,000 apps and one with 30 apps, which would you choose? Yeah. To be fair, Apple had a built-in advantage at the launch of the App Store — there were already a few million first generation iPhones out there. Palm attempted to launch the entire package: new device, new OS and new app store, all at the same time. As Medialets notes, the other company that did this recently was Google with its Android platform late last year — but it didn’t have to make the phone, HTC made the G1. Still, Android also failed to secure the type of launch the App Store had for its Android Market. It’s still growing, but not nearly as fast as the App Store. And don’t expect things to pick up anytime soon for the App Catalog. While more developers do have their hands on the SDK now, there is still no real infrastructure to do things such as app payments. That’s something that really hamstrung the Android Market early on. But farther in the future, Palm does have a second device running the webOS coming out . That should undoubtedly help move some apps. Of course, perhaps you heard, Apple has a new device of its own coming out tomorrow . [photo: flickr/ robert thomson ] Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Leave It To Chinese Quarantine To Reinforce The Value Of Social Media Top
After a whirlwind tour of East Asia with GeeksOnAPlane (see my assessment posts for China and Japan here and here ), I’m back in the states and almost fully recovered from a potent bout of jet lag. I’m not complaining, however, since several other members of our group came down with a nasty stomach flu on the return flight. And one member, Mike Su of Break Media , actually got picked up by the Chinese authorities in Beijing on suspicion of swine flu, only to be stuck in quarantine for five days before getting cleared and released. Mike, who had skipped the Tokyo leg of the trip and joined us in Beijing only a couple of days earlier, took his poorly timed incarceration in stride. Since he needed no real medical attention whatsoever (the officials nabbed him because he had sat two rows away from someone on the plane over who indeed carried swine flu), Mike was left to sit alone in a hotel room for days on end with just his thoughts and a computer. Finding nothing else meaningful to do, he decided to blog his entire experience for the rest of us to enjoy. The result is a set of some pretty amusing and informative posts about what it’s like to experience Chinese quarantine. Welcome to Hotel Quarantine will start you off with the back story, while The Seven People You’ll Meet In Hotel Quarantine is the post that should stand the test of time. Most relevant to the TechCrunch audience, however, is the second-to-last piece, Quarantine 2.0 , where Mike reflects on how social media helped make his time in quarantine bearable. He describes how he was able to use Twitter to interact with the outside world and live vicariously through the rest of the GeeksOnAPlane group. Skype and other live streaming services helped him tap remotely into the events we were attending. And blogging, of course, helped him pass the time and ensure that his experience wasn’t for naught. Kris Krug, who spoke at a TEDx event in Shanghai on Monday, noted that these days "If you don't stick it on the Internet, it didn't happen". For Mike, that didn’t sound like hyperbole, since no one could share his memories unless he published them online. As he put it, “[It's] not that social media replaces or reduces the need for human interaction, but when you're forced into a situation that specifically prevents human interaction, social media becomes your best alternative.” Well put, I think, and a good counter-argument to the idea that social media is a waste of time and ironically anti-social. Not that most of us live in a quarantine-like environment, but it’s important to step back and see just how much better we’re able to connect with other people through space and time these days, even compared to 5 years ago. The most inspirational part of his post comes as an update: Been thinking about all this more throughout the day. It's hard to imagine five years from now that we'll look back at this and think how primitive it was and how much things have changed. But in the meantime, how cool is it to live in a time with so much change, and so many things left yet to be discovered? I'm leaving this quarantine more excited than ever that I get to work in web technology, and to think, no matter how mundane something such as "What are you doing?", or a video of this kid starting a dance party is, we are changing the way we live our lives, and that's pretty cool. Hear, hear. Let’s hope Mike will join GeeksOnAPlane for the full tour when it travels next to Latin America or some other region, with or without a high sensitivity to transmittable illness. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
As Blogger Nears Its Tenth Birthday, It Still Dominates. But For How Long? Top
Never underestimate the power of first-mover advantage, especially when being one of the first movers gets you bought by Google. Back in August, 1999, Pyra Labs launched Blogger. LiveJournal had launched six months before and Open Diary in October of the previous year. But it was Pyra Labs which was acquired by Google in February, 2003, and the rest was history. Now, nearly ten years later , Blogger is still the dominant hosted blogging platform. In May, 52 million individual people from the U.S. visited a Blogger blog, almost twice as many as the 28 million who visited a blog hosted by Wordpress.com (comScore). Six Apart properties, including Typepad.com, attracted 14 million. Millions of bloggers still use Blogger because it is easy. However, Wordpress.com is making steady gains and growing its aggregate audience in the U.S. at more than twice the annual rate of Blogger (40 percent versus 14 percent). These numbers don’t count all the blogs that host Wordpress on their own servers, such as Techcrunch. The vast majority of Blogger traffic comes from outside the United States, where its annual growth rate is 38 percent compared to Wordpress.com’s 59 percent. On a worldwide basis, Blogger blogs have a readership of 267 million people a month, compared to 143 million a month for Wordpress (comScore, April, 2008). The biggest countries are, in order: 1. U.S. 2. Brazil 3. Turkey 4. Spain 5. Canada 6. U.K. From a business standpoint, Blogger is good for Google because it creates millions of sites which can show AdSesne ads. It creates more inventory for Google. Only recently has Google bothered to start showing ads to the users of Blogger itself every time they publish a post . Can Blogger keep its lead indefinitely, or will Wordpress eventually catch up? Or will something else entirely overtake both of them? Today, two of the people behind the original Blogger, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, have another little service that is capturing people’s attention. It is called Twitter, you may have heard about it. In May, Twitter.com had 17.6 million unique U.S. visitors to its Website alone, making it bigger already than Six Apart. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Justin.tv Gains DVR Functionality Top
The thing that saved television watching for me was the advent of the digital video recorder (DVR). I love the idea that you can be watching something, but have to stop to do something else, so you just pause it, and it will record it so you can come back later and pick up where you left off. Now you can have the same functionality on the live-streaming video site, Justin.tv . While most live-streaming services offer archives of live recorded video, the nice feature here is the simple way to pick up just where you left off watching something. The feature, rolling out this afternoon, will offer a bar under each video that will read, “Continue watching this later.” If you click on it, all that live video will be recorded so that you can come back to it at a time of your choosing. You’ll receive a link to a place to come back and watch it with a message that looks like: Use the link below to continue watching this broadcast when you have time, starting from what you’re watching right now (to within a few minutes). This link will continue to work for 7 days. You could also use this link to share with friends if you all wanted to pick up watching something together. Unfortunately, unlike TV DVR, there is no way to fast-forward through parts that you may want to skip. But I’m told that such functionality is likely in the works for a later release. CrunchBase Information Justin.TV Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Facebook Makes It Easier To Search Your Inbox Top
Facebook has had a big week. The social network finally caught up to MySpace in the U.S., according to ComScore. News leaked of its upcoming Everyone button. And Facebook made some significant improvements to its search capabilities . Now the social network is improving its inbox’s interface, which previously was a little clunky and difficult to organize. The new design gives you filter options at the top of your inbox to help you identify unread messages as well as to report any spam, or unwanted messages you receive. Facebook has also ramped up its search feature within the inbox, which was lacking in its earlier version. To find specific messages, you can type a keyword or a friend’s name in the search box in the upper-left corner of the screen, and then the results come back only for messages from that person. Yes, this is pretty basic stuff, but it should make it easier to search your Facebook inbox. Facebook is keeping some of the same functionality as before. You can still view Updates from the Facebook Pages you are connected with. You can also manage subscriptions to your fan pages by clicking the “Edit Subscriptions” link beneath “Inbox of Updates.” Facebook says it plans to send messages from Groups and Events to Updates as well. Friendfeed has also updated its email capabilities today, making a few useful improvements its email alerts for new subscribers. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 

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