Wednesday, June 10, 2009

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Behold! The Living Sasquatch Top
Remember those holograms we saw during the presidential election? It was just like the hologram of Princess Leia that R2D2 shows to old Ben Kenobi, except suckier. I bet you wished, like I did, that you could make your own cool holograms, but with Sasquatch, right? Your dreams have been answered, thanks to LivingSasquatch.com ! This is a pretty cool little application. Simply print out the foot, and place it in sight of your webcam. Then use the simple storyboard tools to line up a sequence of actions, emotions, or attacks, and watch Sasquatch act them out right in front of you! Here's a little video I made that took all of two minutes to prepare. With a little more time, and a modest amount of creativity, you can whip up any number of clever Sasquatch videos! I can't wait to see someone reenact their favorite scenes from Harry and the Hendersons ! Be sure to check out the gallery for more glorious Sasquatch videos.
 
SnapStream Charts Trending Topics On The Tube Top
Snapstream, the company that makes a device that lets enterprises record thousands of hours of TV (from both satellite and digital cable sources) and search inside the recordings for keywords, has launched a trending topics site for TV. The site lets you see the hot words (those that are ascending in mentions) and cold words (those that are descending in mentions) on national television. And you can also enter couple of keywords (up to 5) into TV Trends and you'll get a graph showing you the relative frequency of mentions of those words on mostly-news national programs on ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, MSNBC and CNN. Snapstream crawls closed-captioning text for programs that they record. They filter out local programming, sitcoms, and sports and then cleans-up, analyzes and indexes data for the trends site. When you graph a keyword, the site will give you a view of excerpts of stories at selected points along the curve and you can also filter the results by network. For example, you can chart trends of the mention of “Twitter” on CNN alone. TV Trends graphs can be embedded into a site or blog. Here’s a comparison between mentions of Twitter and Facebook over the past six months. You can see the spike in mentions in April, around the time of the Ashton Kutcher/CNN showdown. I compared SnapStream’s trends to Google Trends and Twitter’s Trending Topics. SnapStream’s mentions differ because it tallies the most common mentioned words, not topics. So today, SnapStream’s top keywords mentioned include several references to the Holocaust Museum Shootings, including “the gunman,” “museum,” and “Holocaust.” Twitter and Google both listed the Holocaust Shootings as one trending topic. And of course, the content that is popular differs between the two mediums. For example, one of twitter’s Trending Topic’s is “#geekpickuplines.” And Google lists “Contessa Brewer,” the MSNBC host who recently had an on-air meltdown that was spread via YouTube. On the other hand, SnapStream lists “North Korea” and “Chrysler” as hot topics. SnapStream’s site isn’t updated in real-time (it is updated every 3-4 hours), which puts its topics at a disadvantage to Twitter and Google’s topics, that are close to real-time. But Twitter’s Trending Topics has its disadvantages too and thus far, there isn’t much on the web that measures trending topics on national TV. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Looking Forward To Streaming Live Video From Your iPhone 3G S? Not So Fast. Top
There’s a poorly kept secret in Silicon Valley: A lot of people are using their iPhones to stream live video over the web. The reason this is kept secret is because technically, no one is supposed to have such an app on their iPhone. You see, Apple has not allowed any of these live-streaming apps into the App Store. One reason is because these apps use hacks to get the iPhone’s camera to record video. But another is undoubtedly because AT&T does not want live streaming video clogging up its network. But if Apple and AT&T think videos like this and this were shot on something like a Nokia N95, they’re dreaming. Even the video-crippled iPhone 3G has proven to be a great tool for shooting streaming live video, and now with the launch of the iPhone 3G S — which actually supports video, the implications are huge. Companies like Qik and Ustream should be shouting from the rooftops, “Finally!,” right? So why is everyone so quiet when it comes to using the iPhone 3G S for streaming live video? Well, because it’s still far from a sure thing. Speaking with representatives from Qik and Ustream — two of the leading live streaming video companies — both seem to be completely in the dark when it comes to any streaming live video from the phone functionality in the new device. Obviously, they’re both very interested in it (and that’s probably an understatement ), but it sounds like Apple and AT&T aren’t too interested in talking to them about it, right now. The iPhone video capture problem is now out of the way, as Apple announced it has opened its video APIs to third parties, but that doesn’t mean that live streaming video output will be okay, Qik co-founder Bhaskar Roy tells us. He says that his team is currently digging through the new APIs in the iPhone 3.0 software, but it’s hard to know anything for sure until they get their hands on the actual iPhone 3G S hardware, which will be available next week. And while it would be easy to blame the life or death of such functionality solely on AT&T, the whipping boy when it comes to all problems iPhone-related lately, it could well be Apple’s APIs that are limiting such functionality. “I haven’t heard specifically about AT&T’s concerns,” Ustream founder John Ham tells us. Still, there’s good reason to think AT&T is plenty happy not to see any live streaming video apps anytime soon on the iPhone. It has been widely reported that AT&T is prohibiting iPhone apps like the Sling Player from streaming video over its 3G networks due to bandwidth concerns. This is true even though AT&T allows the same app to work over its 3G network on other phones. It’s crap. And we could be looking at getting handed the same plate of crap when it comes to sending live streaming video from the new iPhones. And it seems pretty unfair to these video startups trying to provide their service to customers. “Currently, viewing YouTube videos on the iPhone presents a load that is likely larger than the aggregate amount of bandwidth used by many individual broadcasts [on Ustream] at any given moment,” Ham notes. That’s interesting because YouTube, which is owned by Google, obviously has had an official app on the iPhone since day one, and AT&T doesn’t seem to ever complain about that. Why any of this matters is because live streaming video from your phone is proving to be an invaluable tool for certain circumstances. Despite its popularity, most people still don’t carry around Flip cameras at all times, and even if they did, those don’t stream live to the web. But having such a tool that is always on you, on your phone, with such capabilities is huge. How else could we get great videos cornering Google co-founder Sergey Brin at a conference or the Google Goats ? AT&T has been working to overhaul its 3G network, upgrading to High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) which can run at 7.2 Mbps — which the new iPhone will work with. Of course, that won’t start happening until “later this year,” so our best hope for live video support over 3G may be then. If we don’t have such a capability at least by then, that’s just pretty pathetic — no matter whose fault it is. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
The More Followers You Have, The More You Tweet. Or Is It The Other Way Around? Top
Oh, the burdens of popularity. We already know that most people on Twitter are sheep with few followers and who don’t Tweet much. But what about the rams? If you want to lead a flock on Twitter, you need to be heard. People with 100 followers send out an average of 2.4 Tweets per day, while those with 1,800 followers Tweet an average of 10.2 a day, according to a new study by Sysomos , a social media analytics company based in Toronto. The inflection point seems to be between 800 followers (2.8 Tweets a day) and 1,000 followers (6.4 Tweets a day). The more followers you have, the more you Tweet. Perhaps once people attract a large enough audience they feel obligated to keep them entertained. More likely, the more you Tweet the more followers you get, provided you actually have something interesting to say. As it turns out, not everybody uses Twitter as a broadcast mechanism. Many people simply tune in passively and skim their feeds. Sysomos looked at 11.5 million Twitter accounts and concluded that the top 10 percent of Twitter users produce 86 percent of the Tweets (which closely matches a Harvard Business School study that estimates the top 10 percent of Twitter users do 90 percent of the Tweeting). It is even more concentrated than that. The Sysomos data indicates that the top 5 percent of people on Twitter account for 75 percent of all Tweets. More broadly, 50 percent of people on Twitter send out updates less than once a week. But 36 percent of the accounts Sysomos tracks send out Tweets every single day. So about a third of people on Twitter are fairly active, dedicated users. While half are more passive desk potatoes, Tweeting less than once a week. These numbers are actually higher than the activity suggested by other recent reports. For instance, TweetGrade found that 29 percent of Twitter accounts in its sample have zero followers ( same link as above). Sysomos, on the other hand, found a much lower percentage of accounts with zero followers: only 7 percent. And it counts 21 percent of users who have never posted a Tweet (Ironically, 65.5 percent of people who identify themselves as social media marketers have never posted an update). These discrepancies may be due to the way Sysomos gathered data on those 11.5 million accounts. It indexed Twitter starting with a core set of accounts and then spreading out to all of their followers and followees. Dead accounts or spam accounts with 0 followers and 0 Tweets would be less likely to be picked up this way. All of the data is as of mid-May. The study also broke down the market share of Twitter clients, both desktop and mobile. More than half of all users (55 percent) use a Twitter app. The most popular way to use Twitter is through the Website (45 percent), followed by TweetDeck (19 percent). Twitterfon and Tweetie are the two most popular mobile apps and the No. 3 and No. 5 most popular ways to use Twitter overall, with 4.5 percent and 3.7 percent market share, respectively. Twitterfeed, which people use to submit RSS feeds to Twitter and which was purchased today by Betaworks, was the No. 4 client with 3.8 percent share. (Here are more up-to-date cient usage stats from TwitStat ). Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Massive Layoffs Coming To MySpace - 25% Or More May Be Cut Top
MySpace is about to have a major wave of layoffs, according to multiple sources close to the company. One source describes the number of people affected as “massive”, while another source says that the layoffs will likely affect between 300 and 500 employees. It’s unclear if these numbers apply to MySpace alone or its parent company Fox Interactive Media, but MySpace makes up around 1600 of the 2900 employees in FIM, so it’s likely that the social network will be hit hard. Last summer MySpace let go of 5% of its staff, and as many as 45 employees were laid off last month . These cuts go far deeper. We’ve heard that the company’s legal team is hammering out the paperwork that will need to be submitted to the state of California under the WARN act, which requires large companies to give advance notice of any major layoffs. We’ve contacted the California Employment Development Department, which has yet to receive the filing, but we hear they should be getting it any day now. Contacted for comment, a Fox Interactive Media spokesperson issued the following statement: "Like any company with new leadership, Fox Interactive Media is reviewing every aspect of our operations, performance and structure. It's no secret that we are looking for ways to improve our products, increase the value of our digital assets, and enhance the overall financial strength of the company." Since former AOL chief Jonathan Miller took over as News Corp’s CEO Digital Media and the MySpace executive team shakeup in April, MySpace and FIM have undergone extensive measures to cut costs, including these personnel hits. FIM also just backed out of its plans to take over its new Playa Vista offices. Why the cuts? MySpace traffic is plummeting , and revenue is going to take a huge hit when the Google deal terminates in mid 2010. MySpace already has an uphill battle on its hands as it vies to compete with Facebook, and it’s no longer going to have that very lucrative revenue stream to lean on. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Pandora's iPhone App Gets Concert Listings — Through An Ad Top
Pandora had the top downloaded iPhone app for all of last year, and it continues to be a big success for the company, even helping them make some money . Now there’s another avenue to potentially do that with personalized concert listings within the app thanks to a partnership with SonicLiving . The feature, which is already live on the web , shows you concerts you might like based on music you have rated, bookmarked or stations you’ve created on Pandora in the past. It shows you these concerts based on your location. But there’s a catch. It’s not actually a part of the Pandora app itself, but rather is an advertisement, sponsored by Amstel Light, you can click on to be taken to the personalized listing of concerts. From there you can buy tickets to shows. This seems like a smart play for both Pandora and SonicLiving as this type of ad should lead to a solid number of click-throughs. The concert recommendation space has been heating up recently, with Livekick going live and Songkick launching a large update to its service. But using Pandora’s music recommendation data, which millions of people already use on a regular basis, through its API, seems like it could be a better way to recommend shows. Of course, I’m not really sure how this is going to work for Pandora One users , who pay a yearly fee not to see ads — including those on the iPhone. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
gdgt Draws 4.7 Million Views During WWDC Keynote. Not Bad For A Site That Hasn't Launched. Top
gdgt , the new consumer electronics site founded by Peter Rojas and Ryan Block that was first announced in September, hasn’t even launched yet. But it’s already managing to to draw millions of viewers for its coverage of major events, like Apple’s WWDC keynote on Monday, which saw 4.7 million views in less than two hours. Of course, gdgt’s coverage was no match for that of our own CrunchGear’s , but for the site to already be attracting such a sizable audience is an impressive feat. The small team managed to handle the huge traffic spike using Rackspace’s Cloud services. The impressive traffic stats aren’t much of a surprise: Rojas and Block have built up large followings during their time running Engadget and Gizmodo , two of the most popular gadget blogs. Up until now gdgt has primarily consisted of weekly podcasts from Rojas and Block, and we still don’t know what form the final site will take. It sounds like we’ll find out soon though — tucked away at the end of the WWDC live blog is a note that gdgt will finally be launching in the next few weeks. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
GeeksOnAPlane Meet Tokyo 2.0, Learn About The Relation Between The Web & Language Top
The GeeksOnAPlane Asia tour kicked off on Monday in Tokyo, with the group of mostly US-based geeks leaving today for Beijing. Former TechCrunch employee Mark Hendrickson already shared his views on the Japanese tech scene from an American perspective, giving me room to summarize (almost) all presentations the GoaP group witnessed in Tokyo (I myself am a Japan-based writer for the TechCrunch network). This means there is a lot of substantial stuff to cover, which is why I will do a two-part posting on the GoaP Tokyo leg (the second piece follows tomorrow). First on the list is Tokyo 2.0 , a monthly web industry event that combines networking with a number of presentations and lightning talks (and regularly attracts an audience of about 200 people). This time, a total of four presentations tried to shed light on the question of how language and the web can be interconnected and how this helps in the evolution of the web. Here is a quick summary of all the presentations held during Tokyo 2.0 this Monday. Presentation 1: The application of NLP to ‘goo’ services (by Junji Tomita) Background and summary: Ranked at No. 10 in Alexa Japan, Goo is one of the biggest search engines and portal sites in Japan. Presenter Tomita introduced two NLP (natural language processing)-based tools developed by the company, ‘Blog Sentiment Analysis’ and ‘Blog Report Card’. The first tool is available to automatically understand emotions textually expressed within blog postings. It retrieves text from blogs, parses it (”This PC comes with a cool display.” as opposed to “This cool PC comes with a display.”) and then visualizes the processed data on a results page. The report card tool grades your blog after you type in its URL based on four different factors, i.e. influence or diligence. Neat idea, but this appeared to be more of a gimmick to me. Full video of the presentation (English and Japanese, 17:18 min): Presentation 2: Ubiquity - Command the Web with Language by Michael Yoshitaka Background and summary: The GeeksOnAPlane (and myself) particularly enjoyed the great presentation delivered by Michael Yoshitaka on Ubiquity , a project launched by Mozilla Labs last year. Yoshitaka said Ubiquity, a Firefox add-on that unites textual commands acting as mashups for web services, helps users accomplish more online by combining the web with language. The big idea is to use natural language for the commands, to make using Ubiquity as easy as possible. Let’s say you write an email in which you invite someone for dinner in the “Cyber Cafe” in San Francisco and want to include a map. Normally you would have to open a new tab, find a map somewhere and copy the link into the email text. However, users can open Ubiquity right within the email tab, simply enter “map san francisco” in the text box and insert the Google map that pops up into the email text with a single keystroke (or select the name of the cafe and city and let the tool map it). Type the words “yelp cyber cafe san francisco” and Ubiquity offers you a JPEG that can be included right into the email text and shows the Yelp rating for that cafe. The whole process just takes seconds as you don’t have to access sites like Google Maps or Yelp anymore. It all happens within the browser tab that you currently work in. Mozilla Labs itself labels Ubiquity an experiment and is currently working on localizing the tool. More on that and other Ubiquity-related stuff in Yoshitaka’s video or over on SlideShare . Full video of the presentation (English and Japanese, made by Yoshitaka himself, 9:10 min): Ubiquity: Command the Web with Language 言葉で操作する Web from mitcho on Vimeo . Presentation 3: An online synthetic speech system, Voice Delivery System by Shinjyou Sunao Background and summary: Another presentation tickling the fancy of the GoaP group centered on VDS (Voice Delivery System), an API for synthetic speech generation developed by Tokyo-based Knowledge Creation [JP]. Targeted mainly at elderly and disabled web users, VDS lets owners of any site on the Internet add a “reading out” button. Press it and VDS makes sure the text content on the page will be read out loud for you. A total of 30 languages is currently supported. Great stuff and the best thing is users are not required to download any software. Knowledge Creation offers a free version (for pages containing up to 5,000 characters) and several “pro” versions. Full video of the presentation (English and Japanese, 13:20 min): Presentation 4: Social Media and Translation - Bridging the Two Solitudes by Chris Salzberg Background and summary: Tokyo-based American Chris Salzberg , a writer and translator who used to work for international blog network Global Voices Online , spoke about the implications of multilingualism on the web. Salzberg argues that social media on one side and human languages on the other are nothing but materializations of different kinds of solitude. He argues that community translation is the main key to bridge the gap between these disconnected parts, but couldn’t finish his presentation in time (which is why I embedded his slides below). Globalvoices Salzberg 20090608 View more Microsoft Word documents from Tokyo20 . The video (Salzberg’s presentation in English and Japanese had to end after 11:30 min) can be found here . Lightning Talks: The lightning talks were held by four Japan-based web start-ups: Popin ’s popIn Rainbow (an add-on for all major browsers that lets you search, compare prices, look up information on Wikipedia etc./ video ), Keireki (a Japanese-only community for “grown-ups”/ slides ), Eigobama (a site teaching English to Japanese by using speeches of Barack Obama/ slides ) and MyGengo (a human translation service currently covering four languages/ video with MyGengo’s presentation starting at 5:30 min). That was a lot of stuff to digest for the gaijin guests on their first night in Japan, but all the Tokyo 2.0 materials are put together nicely here for everyone to check out (I could only scratch the surface within the scope of this article). The GeeksOnAPlane had an even longer day during yesterday’s “Startonomics Tokyo” event, which I will try and summarize tomorrow in a separate post. Tokyo 2.0 organizer Andrew Shuttleworth already announced another event for next month (topic: cloud computing). So please make sure you attend this (non-profit) event if you happen to be in Tokyo on July 13 and want to get in touch with the Japanese tech scene (if not, check out Tokyo 2.0’s Ustream page when it’s time). Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Now That It's The One Millionth Word, "Web 2.0″ Can Be Retired To The Dictionary Top
What do you do if you are an obscure language group in Austin, Texas looking for attention? You declare “Web 2.0″ the one millionth word in the English language. So says the Global Language Monitor , which looks at usage of words on the Web and adds them to its online dictionaries. “Web 2.0″ has been in common usage for a long time, even though Merriam-Webster does not yet recognize it. But interest in the term peaked long ago , and everyone is pretty much ready to move on now. Even John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly, who popularized the term with their Web 2.0 conferences, realize the term is stale . They are looking to extend their brand by calling their next conference “Web Squared.” I guess Web 3.0 was taken . Kudos to the Language Monitor for picking the one word guaranteed to get them coverage. I just don’t think that “Hai Joi” (Word No. 999,999) or “Noob” (No. 999,998) would have elicited the same response . However, their definition is not so great: Web 2.0 – The next generation of web products and services, coming soon to a browser near you. Someone should tell the folks at Language Monitor that Web 2.0 is already here and has been in our browsers for the past few years. Even though it is an quasi-official word now, everybody still has trouble defining it. Here is O’Reilly’s original dissertation on the subject. And his so-called “compact definition”: Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an “architecture of participation,” and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences. Here’s my definition: It’s the modern Web. Period. Can we move on now? Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Google Gives The G1's Physical Keyboard A Glass Of Ice Water In Hell Top
The T-Mobile G1’s physical keyboard sucks . The keys are oddly spaced, they’re too depressed and the device’s Leno chin makes for an overall awkward typing experience. The Google Ion (sometimes called the “G2″ or the HTC Magic) offers a much nicer experience with its virtual keyboard, and is overall a much nicer device. I’m not sure why anyone would buy a G1, but to those that did, Google threw them a rather nice bone today: Keyboard shortcuts in Gmail . If you have an Android phone with a physical keyboard (so, as of right now, the G1), you can now use the same keyboard shortcuts you’re accustomed to in Gmail on your computer web browser. So, for example, if I’m reading a message in mobile Gmail that I want to archive, I can simply hit the “e” button on my G1 keyboard. The same will not work for devices with a virtual keyboard, presumably because it only pops up when you’re in “writing” mode, and when you’re reading email, you wouldn’t be in writing mode. Google rolled out this new feature as a part of some overall improvements to the mobile Gmail experience. The other big improvement is that auto-completion for all phones, including the iPhone, should now be faster. Google sped this up by using previously fetched auto-complete matches. It’s a small, but nice improvement. Back to the physical keyboard for a second, it’s nice that Google has found a way to make the G1’s not completely worthless when everyone gets the Android 1.5 “Cupcake” update which includes the virtual keyboard. But having a large portion of your device serve as basically a shortcut button area is not something most people will care about. I know that most Blackberry’s have nice physical keyboards, and people are obsessed with them, but I finally got around to trying out the Palm Pre’s keyboard — it’s laughable how bad it is. Perhaps if I had index fingers for thumbs it would be okay, but the keys are way too small and crammed together. And the fact that it always feels like I’m popping bubble wrap when I type doesn’t help either. Virtual keyboards for the win. [photo: flickr/ Andrew Mason ] CrunchBase Information Android G1 Google Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Get Ready To Barf. AOL And Sears Want To Push "Good News" Down Your Throat Top
Are you tired of all the depressing headlines every day about bombings, layoffs, and financial collapse? Sears sure is. Its “Life. Well Spent.” ad campaign just doesn’t work next to downbeat stories. What if there was a news site that only ran good news? Well, that wouldn’t really be a news site, but Sears decided to create one anyway in partnership with AOL News. It is called Good News Now, or GNN . There you will find feel-good stories such as “Senior Couple Ties the Knot,” “Lucky Boy Discovers Seven-Leaf Clover,” and “Tourist Survives Dangerous Train Ride.” Topics you can explore further include “Heroes, Winners,” “Upbeat News,” and “More Good News.” You can barf now. Of course, the whole site is plastered with ads from Sears. GNN is like a cross between a bad advertorial and a splog. It is what happens when you let advertisers select the news. If you need a reason to save journalism, this is it. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Last.fm Founders Call It Quits Top
Last.fm founders Felix Miller, Richard Jones, and Martin Stiksel are leaving the music service they founded in 2002 and sold to CBS for $280 million in 2007. In a notice on the site’s blog, Miller writes about the company’s humble beginnings and its journey to CBS, as well as its continued growth since the acquisition: After two years running Last.fm within CBS we feel the time is right to begin the process of handing over the reins. This is the latest stage in a long journey for us founders, which began in a living room in East London in 2002, and took us to the headquarters of one of the biggest media companies in the world. It's been a privilege working with the incredible team here in our London office, and we're extremely proud of what we've achieved together. Last.fm's users have more than doubled in the last 12 months (we are now at an all-time high of 37.3M monthly unique visitors), and we're confident the site will continue to go from strength to strength The news comes soon after our reports that Last.fm’s parent company CBS may have transferred user data to the RIAA or record labels (an accusation they deny , though the issue remains cloudy ). But it’s more likely that the timing is less sinister: Last.fm was acquired almost exactly two years ago , and it is common for earn-out deals to mandate a two year stay. It’s no secret that the employees at Last.fm and CBS haven’t always gotten along, and the founders may well be tired of living under their corporate overlords. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Are You Rich Enough To Buy Wealth.com? Top
Considering the economic crisis and the associated losses of wealth experienced by many of the richest individuals on the planet, it may not be the best of times to auction off a domain name like Wealth.com . On the other hand, that might be exactly the reason why TheInternetCompany suddenly felt the need to do so, and I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that many people are now re-evaluating their approach to wealth management and searching for alternative ways for financing online. The generic six-letter domain name has been under the company’s ownership since 1996 and will be auctioned off privately at the end of this month in collaboration with secondary domain marketplace Sedo . The auction will be held on June 25, although bidders must be pre-qualified by June 15. Don Cook, vice president of TheInternetCompany states in a press release: “Although we have had several attractive offers for the name over the years, we believe that now is the right time to monetize this asset and that an auction, rather than a traditional sale, is the best strategy.” Funny enough, I did a simple search and found out that this is not exactly the first time TheInternetCompany has put the domain name up for auction, something that was not mentioned in the news release: Wealth.com was up for sale at least once before, back in July 2007 . I wonder if this time the private auction will result in an actual sale and how much it will be valued at. Update: as a commenter and this WSJ blog post points out, the starting bid is $2.9 million. Seems to me that this is a bit high as a starting point, but I can imagine a lot of financial organization and media companies would still be interested in owning it at that price. For the sake of comparison, recent domain name sales we’ve written about include Toys.com ($5.1 million), YP.com ($3.85 million), Fly.com ($1.8 million) and Vibrators.com ($1 million). Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Aurora Feint To Roll Out OpenFeint 2.0, A Social Gaming Platform For The iPhone Top
Aurora Feint started out as a puzzle game developer for the iPhone platform but has since evolved into the maker of a comprehensive social gaming platform dubbed OpenFeint that continues to attract independent iPhone game developers to join its rapidly growing community . Tomorrow, the startup is set to announce the roll-out of the second iteration of the platform, conveniently baptized OpenFeint 2.0, at a San Francisco meetup scheduled in the aftermath of Apple’s WWDC event. We got an early look at the completely revamped OpenFeint 2.0 and learned that over 100 games available on the App Store already make use of the social features baked into the system, including several familiar titles like MyBrute, Stick Wars, Knights On Rush, iDracula, Epic Pet Wars and Ankagua 3D. In total, that translates to about 3 million individual iPhone users, according to Aurora Feint, who can be brought into a “social discovery network” that connects the device, Facebook, and Twitter with the ability to ask the one question that the whole system builds upon: “What are your friends playing?”. This question can be asked inside a game, in an OpenFeint Game Lobby (a kind of virtual chat room / message board tied to a game or shared globally across multiple games), or on Facebook by clicking on a newsfeed item and launching the OpenFeint 2.0: Social Discovery application on the social networking service. OpenFeint 2.0 expands upon the social foundations that already existing in the previous version, with additional support for importing friend lists from Facebook and Twitter, sending actionable notifications to both networks, 100 XBox Live style achievements per game, social player profiles, friend leaderboards, social One Touch iPromote pages including a list of all a player’s friends who are already playing the game and so on. Peter Relan, investor in Aurora Feint who doubles as the company’s Chairman, says the second iteration of OpenFeint takes it “one step closer to the de facto social gaming platform for the iPhone.” He added: “I believe what distinguishes the iPhone is the ability for developers to succeed without having to sign up with large publishers. OpenFeint 2.0: Social Discovery is an essential ingredient in the success of indie games.” On another note: Netanel Jacobsson, until recently an executive at Facebook, has recently joined the startup’s advisory board. Screenshots of the OpenFeint 2.0 platform, which should go live tomorrow evening: Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Juniper Research: Cheap Phones Are Big Business Top
A new report from Juniper Research forecasts that by 2014, annual sales of low-budget mobile devices will rise to north of 700 million units, up 22% from this year. The report goes into the various schemes that have been implemented to help ‘connect the unconnected’, or the estimated 3 billion people on the planet that do not own mobile phones. That number include people who live in areas where wireless networks offer coverage, something that is not always the case because operators tend to shy away from underdeveloped markets because of limited chances of financial return on investments. Apparently, the key to be able to tap into this vast pool of potential customers in these so-called ‘emerging markets’ lies in drastically reducing the cost of handsets that can be used by low-income users. Mobile handset juggernaut Nokia is a big believer in this, as we’ve talked about in the past when the company released a series of devices and services specifically targeting these emerging markets and the debut of its Mail on Ovi service on some 35 different Series 40 handsets. According to Juniper’s report, of which you’ll find a summary in this free whitepaper , entry-level devices (Nokia’s definition for phones that sell for less than $60) accounted for 45% of total global shipments in 2008, which translates to 535 million units. However, Juniper also says ULC devices (ultra low-cost or devices selling for $5 on average) were only a fraction of those but growing in importance quickly. By 2014, Juniper forecasts low-cost devices to account for over 50% of all devices sold worldwide each year. Of the 700 million low-cost handsets expected to be sold in 2014, Juniper Research believes around 24% will be sold in Africa and the Middle East. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Kiva Brings Microlending Home To U.S. Entrepreneurs In Need Top
The financial crisis has made a lasting impact on small businesses around the world and here at home in the United States. With the credit crunch creating a virtual standstill of lending, small businesses in the U.S. are facing an uphill battle to find funds, especially if their financial history isn’t stellar. Kiva.org, one of the web’s most interesting innovators in the micro-lending space, is hoping to come to the aid of U.S. entrepreneurs and small businesses by launching a pilot expansion that would allow individuals anywhere to make small loans to low-income U.S. entrepreneurs through Kiva’s platform. Kiva is a peer-to-peer lending site that facilitates micropayment loans between citizen lenders and extremely low-income entrepreneurs in developing countries. Through Kiva's platform, anyone can loan $25 or more to support an entrepreneur and the specific progress of the loan can be tracked from initial funding to repayment. Upon receiving repayment, lenders can withdraw their funds from Kiva or lend again to another entrepreneur, thereby continuing the lending cycle. In April alone, Kiva members loaned $4.5 million to entrepreneurs, a 56 percent year-over-year increase and a record month for Kiva. Since the microfinance platform’s birth in 2005, over $75 million has been loaned through Kiva.org to support more than 180,000 individuals from 44 developing countries. Kiva’s president, Premal Shah, says this new initiative to include U.S. businesses increasingly made sense as the financial markets deteriorated and traditional lending began to dry up even in the U.S. According to Kiva, small businesses represent more than 87 percent of all businesses in the United States, and, on average, these micro-enterprises are responsible for 900,000 new jobs created per year according to the Association for Enterprise Opportunity. This number seems small to me but the impact of small businesses on job creation is clear. To make matters worse, Kiva says more than 10 million business owners faced difficulty obtaining capital—even before the credit crisis and economic slowdown. Kiva will launch today with the ability to for anyone to make loans to 45 small businesses and entrepreneurs seeking funding from the areas of New York, San Francisco, Boston, Atlanta and Miami. The businesses range in purpose and services, from salons to landscaping to day care facilities. For example, a Queens, NY-based entrepreneur delivers baked goods to bodegas in New York. He is looking to raise $6000 to fund insulation technology for his trucks. Shah tells us that the idea was first introduced by California’s first lady and journalist, Maria Shriver, when she visited Kiva’s office last year. She asked if Kiva's model could be replicated domestically to support low-income entrepreneurs in the United States. Shah said that initially he wasn’t sure if lending within the U.S. fit into Kiva’s model of international development. But following the recession, the organization realized the opportunity and need to provide community driven, low-cost capital for the everyday small business owner in the U.S. Traditionally, Kiva uses partner microfinance programs, called a “Field Partners,” to evaluate whether businesses and entrepreneurs are eligible for Kiva’s platform. Field partners looks at a variety of factors in businesses, including past loan history, village or group reputation, and feasibility of business idea and then facilitates the loan transactions between Kiva and the microenterprise. In the US, Kiva will be partnering with ACCION USA, microfinance institution that lends to 48 states across the U.S., and Opportunity Fund, a community development financial institution based in San Jose, CA. But P2P lending to U.S. businesses has proven to be controversial in the past. Prosper, a US peer-to-peer lender stopped all new lending on its site because of scrutiny by the SEC. Prosper, which is currently back online, agreed to register under the Securities Act, a process which took months. Since Prosper is a seller of investment, the organization had to be registered with the SEC, according to securities laws in the U.S. Loanio and Lending Club also faced similar problems in P2P lending initiatives. Shah says that Kiva differs from P2P lending sites like with Kiva, you can’t earn a rate of return. The best you can do is get your money back at 0% interest - like lending to a friend. Shah maintains that a key factor for the SEC to determine is whether the organization is offering a ’security’ — where there is an opportunity to earn a rate of return. Since Kiva’s loans to the working poor at 0% interest are clearly charitable in nature, Shah says that registration with the SEC is not required. One of the compelling parts of the new program is the ability for lenders in other countries to lend entrepreneurs in the U.S., making Kiva the enabler of economic development throughout in both developed and underdeveloped countries. Kiva has also signed up celebs to take part in the new initiative. Apparently, actor Tom Hanks will be lending to a U.S micro business and investor Warren Buffet has been asked to contribute to the new project as well. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Live Video From Berlin: TechCrunch Berlin Meetup Top
TechCrunch Europe is holding an afternoon of presentations, panels and pitches exploring the German tech scene today, from 3pm (Berlin time) onwards. Here you’ll find the live video stream provided by Sevenload and we’re holding it at the office of Zanox . Thanks also to Gründerszene , Dwight Cribb Personalberatung and Seedcamp for their support. See below for our schedule. Update: Due to the popularity of the event (which sold out a week ago) we’ve now arranged an after-party from 9pm at the offices of Soundcloud . Details are here. In addition, I will be hanging at Caras Gourmet Coffee at Neue Schönhauser Str. 9 on Thursday afternoon. Feel to get in touch . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Google Translator Kit: Automated Translation Meets Crowdsourcing Top
Only a handful of blogs picked up on Google’s fresh Translator Toolkit , which the company launched yesterday by means of a blog post , but this new service really deserves a second look, if only because Wikimedia apparently sees the tool as something that could “change the way Wikipedia grows in other languages” . You can read an extensive review of the product over at Google Blogoscoped , but here’s the gist: Google Translator Kit enables anyone to upload documents for a variety of formats (HTML, Microsoft Word, Rich Text, OpenDocument Text and Plain Text), enter the URL for a file on the web or input a direct link to a Wikipedia article or Knol entry. After submission, the text that requires translation is automatically translated in the back-end and subsequently featured in a so-called ‘Workbench’, neatly placing the resulting text in the target language next to the original. Google will search their translation memory for previous, human translations of the uploaded segment and show the translations in the Search Results tab. Color-coded segments will depict ‘exact’ matches and ‘partial’ matches, so you can edit the text based on the memory as well as previous, human translations. In addition, you can use the computer-generated translation in the Computer Translation tab to jump-start the translation of your current segment. When available, the toolkit will also search Google’s multilingual glossaries to help you translate specific terminology for your language, or you could use the Dictionary tab to do custom searches on Google’s multilingual dictionaries. Besides the self-learning ability of the toolkit, the service also makes it incredibly easy for people to collaborate on translations, bringing a human, crowd-sourced touch to the automated process of Google’s Translate service. (Thanks for the heads up, ArabCrunch ) Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
GeeksOnAPlane: Learnings From Tokyo Top
Over the last two and a half days - the short window of time within which the GeeksOnAPlane group has been staying in Tokyo - I’ve attended two industry events ( Tokyo 2.0 and Startonomics Japan ) and talked with those who live or do business here about how web technology in Japan differs from that in the US. And while this is enough time to gain only a superficial amount of insight into the Japanese tech scene, I’ve gotten the impression that things aren’t fundamentally that different from the way things are back home; there are just idiosyncrasies (albeit important ones) within the Japanese tech landscape. Take mobile, for example. Before coming here, I had the impression that Japan was light years ahead of the US when it came to mobile technology. I’ve found that this reputation, while supported by indisputable advantages, belies a more complicated reality. Mobile devices certainly play a far greater role in everyday life here, with something like 90% of the Japanese owning 3G-capable handsets and 85% of all phone subscribers accessing online services while on the go regularly. The Japanese also use their phones for purposes simply not available to Americans such as watching live TV, scanning QR codes, and paying for goods with the proximity readers that are located in stores and subway stations. However, we’ve also seen demos of several Japanese mobile applications, and the technological sophistication and design of these apps are surprisingly primitive. The general quality appears more in line with the WAP apps from yesteryear than the powerful iPhone and Android apps that have come upon the scene over the past year or so. And from what I’ve been told, they operate in a very closed environment akin to Compuserve that gets reinforced by strong carrier lock-ins and family plans. Speaking of the iPhone, the reaction to it appears to be mixed here. While the iPhone is (generally speaking) more advanced than any other handset on the Japanese market, it poses a number of problems for Japanese consumers. Namely, it doesn’t play nicely with the closed suite of online services that Japanese have become accustomed to using on their phones. It doesn’t do TV streaming without a $100 hardware add-on. The touch keyboard isn’t great for entering Japanese characters. It has a hard time enticing people away from the strong contract lockins they have with other mobile providers. It doesn’t contain a proximity chip for mobile payments. And the iPhone service contract is expensive, despite the fact that carriers have begun giving the device itself out for free in exchange for contracts. Social networking is another area in which familiar trends can be spotted alongside peculiarities. Whereas we in the US track the ongoing struggle between Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, the Japanese witness a mindshare grab between the social networks Mixi , Gree (which had an IPO last year) and DeNA (which operates mobile social network Mobage-town ). These networks are very Japan-specific, despite attempts among them to branch out to surrounding geographical areas such as China. Mixi, for example, requires a Japanese phone number and an invitation to join. While Japan doesn’t appear to breed the same sort of clones that we see come out of China, Japanese firms don’t hesitate to borrow ideas from Western companies. Mixi has forged an open strategy modeled after Facebook with platforms that are designed, and even named, quite similarly (e.g. “Mixi Connect”). Two differences between Japanese and American social networking are particularly conspicuous. The Japanese are much less inclined to put their real identities online, preferring instead to use usernames and avatars that obfuscate their individuality. This is perhaps one reason why Facebook hasn’t taken greater hold here, although I’ve heard from several people that its translations have been rather poor (Twitter, on the other hand, has experienced a modest level of success already). Not surprisingly, Japanese social networkers also tend to spend a lot more time on their mobile devices compared to their American counterparts, with mobile pageviews greatly exceeding desktop pageviews on the predominate social networks. Entrepreneurialism in Japan is inauspicious despite how good the infrastructure is here. In addition to enjoying an extraordinarily high level of mobile connectivity, many Japanese have access to very cheap and fast broadband in their homes. But for a country that also has a large enough population (~127 million) to form a self-contained market for internet services, Japan isn’t home to a large entrepreneurial community. Much of this results from the culture, which discourages people to undertake risky ventures. The government could also be friendlier to small businesses, as it tends to defend incumbent corporations against the encroachments of young upstarts (although luckily web ventures don’t butt heads with them as much as others). The country’s business laws were also not designed to foster new companies until changes were made recently in 2006. As a consequence, the entrepreneurial community is small enough for people to notice when even individual members leave. Tonight we’re off to Beijing in China to see how things operate in the world’s most populous country. Follow our travels - and the media we produce - on Flickr , YouTube , Slideshare , Twitter and our blog . Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Seeqpod Starts Shopping Domain Name, Acquisition Talks Nearing Close Top
It’s been a tumultous few months for Seeqpod , the powerful music search engine that skimmed the web for music files hosted on other servers. In March the site finally cracked under the weight of multiple lawsuits brought on by the major record companies and filed for bankruptcy protection. Then came word that it may-or-may-not have been acquired by Microsoft, though the deal still has yet to be confirmed. Today we’re hearing that Seeqpod has started looking to sell off its seeqpod.com domain name, pending an acquisition deal that is about to close. We got in touch with CEO Kasian Franks, who refused to confirm the rumors, saying that a deal has “not officially closed” and that a decision to unload the domain is still “up in the air”. It may not be official yet, but given that the company has apparently begun prodding for buyers for the domain, it sounds like it’s nearly finalized. Franks was willing to talk vaguely about the pending deal, saying that multiple major suitors are involved. He also noted that any acquisition would be about the company’s technology, and not necessarily the Seeqpod brand. While Franks still won’t name the companies involved, he says that they have no issues with acquiring more traffic, which is why the company may wind up selling Seeqpod.com. Update : As commentor Spencer Schoeben points out below, visiting Seeqpod.com and clicking the site’s logo will take you to Microsoft’s new Bing search engine. So, yeah — it’ll be very surprising if Microsoft isn’t ultimately named as one of the companies involved with the acquisition. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
The New ShopSavvy: Faster, Bigger, Stronger Top
The development house Big In Japan has just rolled out its 3.5 update to its ShopSavvy Android app. ShopSavvy is the useful app that allows you to use an Android phone’s camera to scan barcodes and get pricing information. More importantly, it allows you to compare prices of that item to prices on the web, where you’ll many times find a better deal. This new update which the team calls “Rodan” offers 1,000 new retailers and 750,000 new products, is better optimized for battery life and is much faster, I’m told. ShopSavvy, which was one of the original Google Android Challenge winners when it was still known as GoCart, launched with the Android platform last October and has been one of the most popular applications on the device since then. The company claims it now can compare over 20 million products at over 22,000 retailers. Here are the full list of enhancements the company is claiming with this release: * More than 1,000 additional participating retailers * More than 750,000 additional scannable products * Faster barcode scanning * Faster, more accurate product search * Faster load times * Faster animations * WiFi and GPS setting retention * Notification of whether or not an item is in stock or out of stock * Improved battery life * Optional registration * Option to search by title if product is not found * Google Product Search integration * Ability to visit retailer Web sites inside or outside ShopSavvy * Additional polish to user interface The company has yet to launch an iPhone version of ShopSavvy, a lot of that had to do with the iPhone’s current junky camera that can’t do things like auto-focus. But as we all learned yesterday, that’s about to change. And Big In Japan has been working on an iPhone version for some time. The concept of using a mobile device to scan barcodes is an interesting one. Others apps in this space have since risen up, and pretty much anyone make their own simple barcode scanner using the Android Scripting Environment . The other day we covered Googler Matt Cutts using a barcode scanner to scan books into the Google Book Search database, but a couple days later, he and some fellow Googlers actually came up with a way to do the same thing with the Android phone . You can find the new version of ShopSavvy in the Android Market, or download it directly here . CrunchBase Information ShopSavvy Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 

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