Tuesday, June 30, 2009

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Live Web, Real Time . . . Call It What You Will, It's Gonna Take A While To Get It Top
This guest post is written by Mary Hodder , the founder Dabble . Prior to Dabble, Hodder consulted for a number of startups, did research at Technorati and wrote her masters thesis at Berkeley focusing on live web search looking at blog data. Real time search is nothing new. It is a problem we’ve been working on for at least ten years, and we likely will still be trying to solve it ten years from now. It’s a really hard problem which we used to call “ live web search,” which was coined by Allen Searls ( Doc’s son ) and refers to the web that is alive, with time as an element, in all factors including search. The name change to “real time search” seems a way to refocus attention toward the issue of time as an important element of filters. We are still presented with the same set of problems we’ve had at least the past ten years. None of the companies that Erick Schonfeld pointed to the other day seem to be doing anything differently from the live web search / discovery companies that came before. The new ones all seem to be fumbling around at the beginning of the problem, and in fact seem to be doing “recent search,” not really real time search. While I’m sure they’ve worked really hard on their systems, they are no closer than the older live web search systems got with the problem. All the new ones give a reverse chron view, with most mixing Twitter with something: blog data, other microblog data, photos, creating some kind of top list of recent trends. Some have context, like a count of activity over a period of time, or how long a trend has gone on or a histogram (Crowdeye) which both Technorati and Sphere experimented with in the early years. Or they show how many links there are to something or the number of tweets. All seem susceptible to spam and other activities degrading to the user experience and none seem to really provide the context and quality filters that one would like to see if this were to really work. All seem to suffer from needing to learn the lessons we already learned in blog search and topic discovery. Publicly available publishing systems starting in 1999 took the value of time and incorporated it into what was being published (think Pyra which is now Blogger, Moveable Type, Wordpress and Flickr, among the many) as well as search and discovery systems for those published bits like Technorati, Sphere, Rojo, Blogpulse, Feedster, Pubsub and others, to walk down memory lane . . . (btw, for disclosure purposes I should state that I worked for Technorati in 2004 for 10 months, and consulted or advised most all the others in one form or another). I started working on this problem in 1999, at UC Berkeley, and eventually did my master’s thesis on live web data search and topic discovery at SIMS (or the iSchool as it’s now known). From 2000 to 2004, people at SIMS would say to me, “What are you doing with blogs and data, it’s just weird. Why does it matter?” But the element of time was the captivating piece that was missing for me from regular search. It’s the element that makes something news, as well as the element that can group items together in a short period to show a focus of attention and activity that often legacy news outlets miss (until more recently when they decided that live web activity was interesting). At Burning Man in 2005, under a shade structure during a hot, quiet afternoon, I remember having a four or five hour conversation with Barney Pell (who would later found Powerset ) about the Live Web and Live Web Search, how to do it, what it meant, how to understand and present time to the user, how much was discovery and how much was search, how structured was the data you could get and how reliant on the time could you be with the data, what meaning you could make from that data, etc. Sergey Brin was sitting and listening, and finally, after a couple of hours, he asked me, “What is the live web and what is live web search ?” Since Barney and I had already been doing a deep dive, I assumed Sergey knew what we were talking about, so it surprised me, but I explained why I thought time was a huge missing element of regular search, and that this was the type of search I worked on. Barney and I continued for a couple more hours. And it got cooler so it was time to go admire the art and that was the end of that. But I have wondered over the years where Google is with the live web and when they might do something with time. Twitter seems to be prodding them . In 2006, “The Living Web” Newsweek cover story by Steven Levy and Brad Stone poked at this issue for the first time in a national forum. When I look at the latest crop of search startups, I think: Why are we doing it all the same way again? Reinventing the wheel? Is anyone doing anything original either with data or interface? Is anyone building on what we’ve learned before about the backend or UI’s? Frankly, our filters suck.. and I suppose that if a name change gets us to think anew about better filters, well, I should rejoice. I’m partly to blame for the bad filters we have to date because in having worked on this problem, I’ve contributed to some of the various live web or real time or whatever the word of the moment is to describe trying to solve this problem. We are very good at publishing our thoughts and visions, with time stamps, but not very good at the filtering side of things. The old method of information search and discovery was to open the paper or magazine, turn the pages with editorially filtered and placed information, and when you were finished, you said, “Okay, I’m informed” (whether you really were or not). But the media got complacent, missed stories and with the ease of blog publishing and sites like Flickr for photos, we could replace paper and supplement our information needs with the whole web. The only problem is, it’s the whole freaking web. An avalanche. We feel anxiety on the web from the lack of filter and editorial grace that one or two printed news sources used to give us. I did a study in 2002, which I repeated in 2004 and again last year in 2008. I asked users to track their online information intake for one week. There were only 30 people in each study, chosen randomly from Craiglist ads, but what I found across each group of 30 was that the average time spent online with news and information sites was 1.25 hours in 2002, 1.85 hours in 2004 and 2.45 hours in 2008. These people are not in Silicon Valley, but they do all have broadband at home and live in the US. Every one of them reported some level anxiety over the amount of data they felt they needed to take in in order to feel informed. They often dealt with it by increasing the time they took to stay informed. They didn’t know that better filters might actually reduce their anxiety. As Erick noted, the tension to solve this problem is between memory and consciousness; or as Bob Wyman and Salim Ismail called it at Pubsub : retrospective verses prospective search. And it is part of the issue. But there is more. Discovery does mean you have to introduce time as an element. The user cannot be expected to know what is bubbling up, or the specific phrases that will name the latest thing. Some people will say “michael jackson” and some will say “MJ” and some will say “king of pop.” And Michael Jackson as a topic is actually pretty easy. I remember once doing usability tests for a live web search and discovery system in 2003, where we asked users to search on Google News and various live web systems for an incident in Australia where a “giant sea creature” was found. But since all the media covering it originated in Australia, and they’d all called it a “massive squid,” and all the follow-on American sources including bloggers had copied the Aussie language, there were no recent hits for “massive sea creature.” Testers had to think creatively about how to get to the info they knew was there, and yet it was a semantic leap. One search tester actually cried as she refused to give up, she was so determined to find the result in any of the live web systems we were testing. We begged her to stop; it was painful. Good discovery could have helped. Another key element of discovery and live web search is getting structured data, because spidering, which Google uses to get data from the web for it’s regular retrospective web search, makes understanding time with a published work more difficult. It’s hard to work with time if you only know for sure when you spidered the page. Twitter on the other hand has structured data because everything is published in their silo so the sites they provide their complete stream to get it in a structured format. They know the time of each tweet. Not to mention the data is available through API’s. This is the most efficient way to draw out meaning for search because you know for sure about the context of each piece of data, with time as one of the pivots, for search and discovery. You also need to get the data model right for the backend search data base, in order to get meaning and link metrics. And you need to understand the different corpuses of data to know what things mean to users (not engineers), and figure out the spam and bad actor problems. There is the original context the data had and there is the UI which is so difficult when trying to make time understandable for many users. In fact some think that communicating the time element to regular users is so hard that making time focused search is really an “advanced search” problem. If designed poorly, the system can contribute to the unnatural production of skewed data by users. If the system involves some sort of filter for authority or popularity, they are subject to power law effects (Technorati calls their metric “authority” but inbound link counts from blogs are not authority, they’re just a measure of popularity). What’s a power law effect? It’s when a system drives activity to reinforce unnaturally the behavior that caused something to be there in the first place. For example, if one of the metrics of a filter counts the number of people clicking on a top search, then the more clicks, the longer the item will stay at the top of the list of searches, even if naturally it would have fallen off the list earlier. Conversely if a metric for a filter involves a spontaneous act, driven by imagination, like writing a tweet, then exposing those items at the top of the filter might be less likely to drive up activity. However, if you show the results to the users, upon seeing a popular topic, they might begin tweeting about that topic without having thought of it before seeing the popular topic. In other words, by revealing the metrics you focus on, you can push users to change their behavior. By driving behavior, power-law distributions keep things with some power at the top because they are at the top or can drive them higher. It becomes a loop. And because no distinction is made between the quality or strength of a unit or what that unit might mean to a group of users in a topic area, straight number counts just aren’t very smart. For example, if we made a system that counted Om Malik’s inbound links and called it authority, no matter the topic, I think Om would agree that even he wouldn’t have great authority and insight on the subjects of say, modern dance or metal working, if he happened to mention those words in a blog post. But on broadband issues, he is most definitely an authority. But Technorati, OneRiot, and other services that take a metric count and apply it for all topics, all circumstances, all search result matches, without context, randomize the quality of the information the user sees. They may provide a filter across the whole web, but they don’t give us any real help in judging what is useful or not. It’s why topic communities are helpful, and once you find a good editorial filter, driven by the human touch, you glom onto it for dear life because it’s such a time and energy saver. I’m under no illusions that we’re remotely close to solving Live Web or Real Time search or even recent search. We are not. Nor are we near solving discovery. But I hope we will. Sooner rather than later. Because I need it now. The opportunity is huge. It means really building algorithmically the editorial filters we have today in the form of people, while balancing the mobs’ activities. Solve that and the prize will be big. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Say What? 'Dial Directions' Acquired By Arabic Language Specialist Sakhr Software Top
Bet you didn’t see this one coming. Back in 2007 we wrote about a service called Dial Directions which lets you call a special phone number and verbally ask for directions, which are immediately sent to you via SMS. Today comes news that the company has been acquired by Sakhr Software , a development house specializing in Arabic natural language processing (NLP). And with their powers combined, they’re building a real-time voice translation service that will allow users to translate phrases from their mobile phones on the fly. It’s a better fit than it sounds. Dial Directions has spent the last few years building mobile applications (it has an app for the iPhone on the App Store), and has also built out the technology required to efficently transfer voice input to servers, where it can then be processed (this server-side processing is also used by Google Voice Search and a number of other apps). Once it makes it to the cloud, this speech will be routed through Sakhr’s software, which is capable of translating English to Arabic and vice-versa. Translated audio and text are then sent back to the mobile phone, all within a matter of seconds. The companies have jointly produced a beta version of the application for the iPhone and BlackBerry, which you can see in the video below. The application is currently in testing with select enterprise customers, with plans to release a consumer version around the end of the summer. Sakhr’s customers include the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Justice, so it wouldn’t be surprising if the technology makes its way out to defense personnel. A Dial Directions spokesperson says that most translation devices in the field abroad rely on a set library of phrases, and says that the new Sakhr translation software should be more flexible. That said, it sounds like this will come with one significant drawback — if your phone can’t reach the network, the software won’t work. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Dial Directions intends to keep its service running for now, though it may not be indefinitely. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
SkyGrid Links Its Financial Firehose To Twitter Top
SkyGrid, the nifty, free financial news aggregator , is now publishing a stream of news on Twitter, letting users follow breaking business news headlines via the microblogging network. The news aggregator, which only features stories about publicly traded companies, not only has an comprehensive Twitter feed for news stories, but the site also has Twitter feeds that are broken down by sector. So users can follow SkyGridHealth or SkyGridEnergy for sector-related news. SkyGrid currently has separate Twitter feeds for 8 different industries. SkyGrid says that the Twitter feed may be especially useful to users who want to access SkyGrid on their mobile devices. Similar to TechMeme and Google News, SkyGrid clusters related news stories based on keyword analysis, what they're linking to, etc. SkyGrid also tries to determine the sentiment of each article - red for negative, green for positive. As we wrote in our earlier review of the services, SkyGrid is an incredibly useful tool, especially now that it is free. But the one element that is missing from SkyGrid is coverage of larger private companies, like Facebook. In order to become a serious competitor to popular aggregators like Techmeme (which also has a Twitter firehose ), the site will need to expand its range of coverage. But especially for people in the financial services industries who use Twitter as a news source, SkyGrid is on the right track to providing users with real-time valuable financial news. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
iPhone OS 3.1 Beta And SDK Already Rolling Out To Developers Top
It looks like Apple has already started sending out the beta version and SDK for the next iteration of the iPhone OS, 3.1, to developers. The iPhone 3.0 software was released just about two weeks ago, ahead of the iPhone 3GS launch. By most accounts it’s pretty stable, though some users have been having battery issues. That’s why it’s a bit odd that Apple would iterate up to version 3.1 already, instead of something like 3.0.1, which it tends to do for minor updates and bug fixes. Could we be seeing a larger update to the OS already? I’m told that there’s nothing much of interest in the release notes to indicate anything major that is new or changed. Here’s the text of the email being sent from Apple: iPhone SDK 3.1 beta and iPhone OS 3.1 beta are now posted to the iPhone Dev Center. These versions are for development and testing only and should be installed on devices dedicated to iPhone OS 3.1 beta software development. Please read the iPhone OS Pre-Install Advisory and the iPhone SDK 3.1 beta release notes before downloading and installing. Update : I’m hearing a few reports that one change is that MMS is turned on by default. Perhaps AT&T is getting closer to turning it on as well in the U.S. [thanks Michael] Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Meebo Tries to Fill "Moments Of Boredom" With An Ad Network For Partner Sites Top
How do you advertise on a Web-based instant messaging service without interrupting conversations and annoying the hell out of users? Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg thinks he has the answer: “There is a moment of boredom while they are waiting for a response, that is when they click on ads.” He’s observed this based on how people interact with the ads which began appearing on Meebo.com last March . Today, Meebo is creating an ad network across partner sites which use its new Community IM service , which ads a Meebo IM bar at the bottom of participating sites. Visitors to one of the 85 partner sites which have implemented the Community IM product (including Current TV, DailyStrength, Flixster, and Webs.com) can chat with their IM buddies without leaving the sites. Today, Meebo is introducing new ad units which pop up along the bottom left of the browser, beginning with ads for the Toyota Piou and AT&Ts. For the Toyota ad, a little car icon pops up on the left of the Meebo IM bar, away from all of the chat activity on the bottom right. If you click on the car, a larger ad 900X400 pixel rich ad overlay opens up which can show a video or any number of interactive ads. “When they click we do not take them away from the conversation,” says Sternberg. During the whole time people is watching the ads, they can still chat with their friends through the Meebo IM column on the right. These ads are similar to VideoEgg’s Twig Ad bar , except they are integrated directly into each site rather than use a frame overlay. But the opt-in nature of both types of ads are part of a general trend of giving consumers control over when and how marketing messages are presented to them. Meebo says its IM service reaches 50 million people a month and can target ads on age, gender, or location. Sternberg says Meebo is seeing 1 percent clickthrough rates on the ads. But he is not without competitors. AOL is planning to offer its own IM bar to external sites through its Socialthing for Website s service, which presumably will also be connected to its ad network. The exchange with sites is that they get social IM features without having to reinvent the wheel, and they get a share of any IM-based ad revenue as well. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Twitter Rolls Out UI Changes To Simplify Your Social Connections Top
Twitter has just quietly rolled out a set of changes to its user interface on the “Following” and “Followers” sections of its website. These changes will clearly make it easier to manage who you follow as well as take actions, such as @replying someone or direct messaging them, directly from the page. There are two new views for looking at these areas. “List” is a compact list of the followers, while “Expanded” offers more details including that user’s last tweet and their real name and location. On the Followers page, there is also a button that allows for one-click following of users who already follow you. What’s interesting about these icons is that they appear to look exactly like icons that Apple uses for OS X — including some of the ones on the iPhone. Could this mean that we’re about to see a revamped mobile version of the Twitter site? Who knows, but it could sure use an overhaul. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
ClackPoint Brings Voice, Document Sharing To Google Friend Connect Top
Over the last six months Google has been ramping up Friend Connect, its social online identity platform that’s a direct rival of Facebook Connect (both products opened up to the public last December). Since then Google and third party developers have released a slew of gadgets and features, including the Social Bar , Recommendations , and Comment Translation . One of the latest to join the fray is ClackPoint , a powerful new gadget that integrates realtime text chat, voice conferencing and basic document sharing with Friend Connect. The gadget works as you’d expect. Clicking on the ‘Call’ button will activate your microphone, and your voice can then be heard by anyone else in your chat room. Alternatively, you can dial in from a phone to one of the site’s dedicated lines (hit the button in the upper right hand corner for a list of numbers). There’s also a standard text-based group chat. As far as sharing goes, you can participate in a group-edited notepad, import PDF slides that can be viewed by other chat members, and quickly send out a poll to everyone else in the chat room. You can try out the gadget for yourself here . While the gadget could probably be used in a business setting, I suspect most businesses will stick with products like WebEx for their serious calls. That said, this would be perfect for more casual group meetings where real identities are still important (for example, a meeting discussing plans for your childs’ soccer team). For more, check out the Google blog post introducing the gadget. You can also find a full directory of gadgets available here . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Digg Tries Again To Bury Dupes Top
Since its inception, one of the biggest problems with Digg has been that users often submit the same content over and over again. This makes it harder for cool content to become popular because some users digg one submitted story, while some digg another. Today, Digg is releasing “several major updates” to its duplicate (known as a “dupe”) detection system. The solution sounds fairly intensive. “To better understand the nature of the problem, we analyzed the types of duplicate stories being submitted. Most common are the same stories from the same site, but with different URLs. Our R&D team came up with a solution that identifies these types of duplicates by using a document similarity algorithm,” Digg’s Director of Product Chris Howard writes in a blog post . He goes on to say that there will be a follow-up more technical post to explain a bit more about how this actually works, but says that it has proven to be a reliable system so far. But the really tricky stuff comes when people submit the same story from a different site. This is a gray area because of course some sites have different takes on the same topic, and whose to say which is more Digg-worthy than another? Digg now says it will scan for descriptive information such as the story’s title to see if something very similar is already in the system. But still, it’s a gray area. At least the submission process should be faster now. Digg will run these dupe checks after you enter the URL but before you enter the description, which saves a step in the process. It claims this dupe detection will take only “a few seconds.” And if you ignore the dupe algorithms and submit dupe stories anyway, Digg is watching: “We'll also be monitoring when certain Diggers choose to bypass high-confidence duplicates and will use this data to continue to improve the process going forward.” [photo: flickr/ yogi ] Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Flickr And Twitter are Now Officially Sucking Face Top
Earlier this month, Flickr started flirting with Twitter integration by allowing users to link their Flickr accounts to their Twitter accounts. The experiment was only for email uploads, which simultaneously created a Tweet with a short http://flic.kr link back to the photo on Flickr. Now that integration is an official feature called Flickr2Twitter . In addition to email uploads, Flickr now lets you Tweet out any photos directly from the site. After linking your accounts, whenever you click on the “Blog this” button on any photo on Flickr, your Twitter account will be one of the distribution options. This works for both photos you’ve uploaded and other photos you find on the site. I have a feeling you are going to be seeing a lot of http://flic.kr links on Twitter pretty soon. Developers who want to add Flickr as a photo option to desktop and mobile clients can use Flickr’s existing APIs. (You can learn more here ). Once that happens, Twitpic and yFrog will have some company on those clients as a pull-down option. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
What Went Down At Rackspace Yesterday? A Power Outage And Some Backup Failures. Top
As many of you know, a lot of the sites that use Rackspace as their hosting provider were down for about an hour yesterday. That’s because Rackspace went down . Apparently, it was a power outage at a data center that caused it, an incident report that we’ve obtained explains. While Rackspace has backup systems in place, a series of events apparently caused those backups to fail, resulting in the servers going down. Here’s the key nugget: The breaker on the primary utility feeder tripped, initiating a sequence of events that ultimately caused a power interruption in Phase I and Phase II of the data center. All systems initially came up on generator power without customer impact. The 'A' bank of generators, which support UPS clusters A and B in Phase I and UPS cluster E in Phase II, then experienced excitation failure which escalated to the point where the generators were no longer able to maintain the electrical load. Rackspace then attempted to switch to our secondary utility feeder, but was unable to do so due to an issue in the Pad Mounted Switch (PMS). At approximately 3:15pm CDT, power supply through UPS clusters A, B and E was lost when the batteries in those clusters discharged, and equipment receiving power through those clusters experienced an interruption in service. The service says only one of its nine data centers were affected by this failure, but many high profile sites collapsed as a result, including EventBrite, Justin Timberlake’s site and Michelle Malkin’s popular political blog. As Rackspace noted yesterday that "We owe better, and will deliver." Below, find the full incident report. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
FriendFeed Feels Pretty, Oh So Pretty Top
FriendFeed now lets you individualize your account with six new designer themes. When you select a theme, your FriendFeed account will always include your theme, and other people looking at your profile page will see it in whatever theme they have chosen. FriendFeed says that it plans to allow users to customize themes down the line as well as give users the ability to create an entirely new theme. Twitter and Gmail also let you add themes and designs to your homepages but some of FriendFeed’s themes have a nicer design, in my opinion. On the other hand, Gmail has a good amount of variety when it comes to choosing a theme. The advantage to Twitter’s themes is that you are able to choose multiple designs in different colors. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
High Gear Media Scores $5.5 Million For Auto Media Network Top
High Gear Media, the publisher of automotive media sites, has secured $5.5 million in Series B funding led by DAG Ventures with Accel Partners and Greylock Partners participating. The company raised $6.5 million in Series A funding in November 2007 from Accel Partners and Greylock Partners. High Gear will use the funds expand its media network and acquire other media properties. High Gear owns and operates 38 auto websites including TheCarConnection.com, GreenCarReports.com, AllCarsElectric.com and AllAboutPrius.com. The network’s sites aggregate automotive content from around the web and syndicate content to other automotive websites and news sites such as Yahoo! Autos, The San Francisco Chronicle and Glam Media, among others. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Firefox 3.5 Soars Past A Million Downloads. Approaching 100 Downloads A Second. Top
Mozilla today released Firefox 3.5 into the wild . Not surprisingly, it’s flying off the virtual shelves. And unlike when Mozilla released Firefox 3.0 last year, its servers are staying up and reliable, so the rate of downloads is pretty incredible. This site , run by Mozilla, shows the download stats for the new browser. Overall downloads are now approaching 1.3 million worldwide, with over 350,000 of those in the U.S. But even more amazing is the number of downloads occurring each second, it’s ranging from 59 to 95 right now. Again, that’s every second . Outside of the U.S., the browser is moving quickly in Germany, France and the UK. The claim is that it’s much faster than the previous iterations of Firefox, and based on just a quick run-through of my favorite sites, I’d say that is in fact the case. Though, to be fair, it’s hard to know if that has something to do with the fact that just about all my browser plugins are not yet working with this version. Not surprisingly, the emphasis on speed in this version of Firefox is on its JavaScript performance. Both Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari have been making headlines recently claiming to be the fastest browsers in this regard. As you can see in the SunSpider test chart below, it appears that Firefox has made huge strides since the slow days of Firefox 2, and has now more than doubled performance over even Firefox 3. As Apple recently touted in a press release: “Safari quickly loads HTML web pages more than three times faster than IE 8 and three times faster than Firefox 3.” So how does 1.3 million downloads in a few hours stack up against its rivals? Well, the most recent browser to offer a major upgrade was Safari, which claimed 11 million downloads in 3 days . But those numbers are tricky because Apple includes Safari updates in its regular OS X software updates, so pretty much all OS X users were at least asked to upgrade after its launch. Still, Apple claimed that of the 11 million, some 6 million were users on Windows machines. And Firefox also pings users to do auto-updates when a new version is available. Despite its launch hiccups, Firefox 3 set the Guinness World Record for software downloads last summer. In just 24 hours, over 8 million people downloaded the browser around the world. We’ll see how this version stacks up. You can watch the live-updating chart and map for Firefox 3.5 downloads here . CrunchBase Information Firefox Mozilla Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
TBD's Deadpool Date Finally Determined Top
Back in 2007 I did a column on TeeBeeDee, a social network aimed at baby boomers. I’d spent some time looking at the space, and thought TBD was the best designed site, avoiding Eons age restrictions and fascination with death and building something a bit broader than Gather . The site borrowed heavily from what worked on sites like Yelp and Facebook, the design was delightful and it gave you fun, addictive get-to-know-me activities. I was also incredibly impressed by its founder Robin Wolaner . (Pictured) But there was still a central question: Would a social network aimed at baby boomers appeal to the demographic? As it turned out, no. The site is shutting down. Below is the letter to users from Wolaner. A Message I Didn’t Want to Send June 30, 2009 I regret to have to inform you that TeeBeeDee will be shutting down by July 13, 2009. We thought we had raised sufficient money to get us to a sustainable business, but many factors changed in the 2 years since our launch. As you have no doubt noticed in the past few months, we lacked the resources to continue developing the product to meet the needs of our community. We will have much to say to you, and to each other, in these next two weeks. Just as we've shared the experiences of our lifetimes here at TeeBeeDee, we will be sharing this goodbye. For me, I can say that the people I have met at this site, and those with whom I've worked these past years, have been a revelation. I have learned so much from so many of you. We have thrilled to marriages, and romances, and lifelong friendships, and support to those in need. Anyone who says "virtual" friendships are less than real ones, didn't spend time in this community. Kat has posted tips about how to save what matters to you at TBD . And 500 TBDers have already joined a network at Ning: http://www.teebeedee.ning.com to stay connected. As the founder, I'd like to close by saying that while our business opportunity proved disappointing, the contributions from our members rarely disappointed. I am proud to call so many of you my friends, and thank you for caring about TeeBeeDee. Robin Founder/CEO CrunchBase Information TeeBeeDee Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Attention Executives: 73% of You Need to Fire Yourselves Top
I still think "Enterprise 2.0" is a meh business trend with a horrible name. It's not that social media/collaboration tools don't have a role in business, and I agree there are some situations where consumer tools aren't the right fit. A great example is Twitter versus Yammer. (Oh, if you only saw the conversations that happen on TechCrunch's Yammer feed…) But I don't see Enterprise 2.0 becoming a big area of corporate spending. The tools are too cheap and easy to replicate with tons of free alternatives, and many of the vendors are just not ready for prime time. One exception might be blogging software, but don’t most companies who want a corporate blog have one by now? Rather than the next Oracle (who by the way was one of the study's underwriters) or even Salesforce.com emerging from this space, I'm betting that existing software-as-a-service companies incorporate the functionality themselves or you get a lot of built-in-house code. There's also the problem that nearly 20% of executives have no idea what “Enterprise 2.0″ is. That comes from a new study that's actually talking up the adoption of Enterprise 2.0. It points out that 40% didn't know what it was at the beginning of the year, so at least that’s progress. What's more it says that 50% of those surveyed consider enterprise 2.0 to be "very important" to their business success. (Of course, I think working out everyday is “very important” to my weight loss goals…doesn’t mean I actually do it.) Still, given that number is so high, it stunned me that the study also said only 7% of people over the age of 45 think that Twitter is an important rapid-feedback tool for business. Sadly, it's not much better among younger folks: Only 27% of those between the ages of 18-30 say Twitter is an important rapid-feedback tool for business. What? Really? You may think we obsess about Twitter too much on TechCrunch, but clearly most business folks aren’t getting the memo. Let's put aside for a moment that there are pretty well proven test cases on how Twitter utilization has helped companies like Dell and Comcast . Paying for outreach or collaboration tools without first checking out what a free, easy tool like Twitter could do is missing the entire point of the cheap flexibility and ubiquity of social media. Put another way (and to paraphrase James Carville): It's a recession, stupid. Try the free tools first. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
The MySpace Exodus Continues: SVP Engineering Allen Hurff Jumps Ship Top
Around this time last year we saw a stream of high ranking employees leaving Yahoo as the web portal reached new lows following the fumbled Microsoft deal. Now, we’re beginning to see a similar trend from MySpace, the once-shining social network that has been recently hit by stagnating growth, waves of layoffs (both in the US and abroad ), and the ousting of its co-founder CEO. The latest member of the executive team to leave is SVP Engineering Allen Hurff , who annouced his decision to leave the company on Friday. A tweet he sent out that day confirms his departure. Hurff was with the company for over four years, where he and former SVP Operations Jim Benedetto were largely reponsible for building up MySpace’s technology team (Benedetto left the company in March). Hurff also played an integral role in MySpace’s adoption of OpenSocial, serving as Chairman of the foundation. The OpenSocial platform, which allows for the integration of third party applications in MySpace, will likely play a key role in the site’s success moving forward, so this is a big loss for the social network. Other key MySpace execs to leave in the last few months include CEO/Co-Founder Chris DeWolfe ; E.J. Hilbert , MySpace’s Director of Security Enforcement; Amit Kapur, COO; and Steve Pearman, SVP Product Strategy. Kapur, Pearman, and Benedetto have teamed up to launch Blue Rover Labs , a still-mysterious venture funded startup. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Can Open Government Be Gamed? Top
If information is power, the first step to gaining power is to get the right data. The Obama administration is a big proponent of opening up government data and making it digitally available. Today at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City, the government’s new chief information officer Vivek Kundra announced USAspending.gov , a new site which launched today that tracks government spending with charts and lists ranking the largest government contractors (Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, etc.) and assistance recipients (Department of Healthcare Services, New York State Dept. of Health, Texas Health & Human Services Commission, etc.). There is also the Data.gov project, which is attempting to digitize government data and make it available in its raw form for citizens and companies to sift through. While Kundra agrees in principle that all public government data should be online, he also cautions that the reality is government data sits in more than 10,000 different systems, many of them written in COBOL or are still locked in dusty paper archives. But at least the government is starting to tackle the problem. The government collects a wealth of data, and the more accessible it becomes the more transparent government itself will be (not to mention the opportunities to startups which can tap into this data to offer new services). The State Department is also using the Internet, and Youtube specifically, to reach out directly to citizens of other countries every time Obama or Hillary Clinton travel abroad. They record video messages to citizens of other countries, which are distributed in multiple languages. Call it YouTube diplomacy. In addition to releasing government data in digital form, the Obama administration is learning to listen to direct feedback from citizens through its Open Government initiative where people can suggest and vote on policy initiatives. These are then further refined and discussed on the Open Government blog and using tools such as wikis. Beth Noveck, the United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government, says the administration has gone from using the Internet to broadcast and amplify its message during the campaign to the realization that it can get information back as well, which it is trying to fold back into policy. She says, “What we've seen is enormously thoughtful suggestions that no small group of people in the White House could have come up with themselves.” Digital tools are bringing participation back to democracy, or at least that is the idea. But once all of this data becomes free and new modes of influencing government policy are deemed to be effective, attempts to manipulate the data and game the system will emerge. Well-funded lobbyists and special interests will descend on these nascent institutions of “open government” like SEO consultants on Google. People from both sides of the aisle will also participate. Todd Herman, the GOP’s Director of New Media, admits as much. The GOP has learned from how the Obama campaign “changed the way community organizing works,” he says. The GOP’s failure in the last election was because “we did not use the tools” of digital organizing and outreach. Speaking of SEO, Herman suggests that Democratic political activists are better than Republican ones at using SEO techniques to promote stories on Google News. He uses the example of the American Medical Association opposing Obama’s healthcare proposal and shows a screenshot of a Google News search where you wouldn’t know that was the case by scanning the headlines. He shows that as proof of the left’s SEO tactics, without really explaining how they are manipulating Google News. The problem with his example, is if you go to Google News right now and search for “AMA Obamacare” the top result is a Forbes story with the title “Will Doctors Buy Obamacare?” So maybe the Republican SEO experts are fighting back, or Google News is self-correcting. What his comments reveal is the lengths to which political operatives and activists are going already to shape public opinion and policy online. They will do the same with open government because they are the most motivated and the most organized. The lobbyists and political parties have never suffered from a lack of data. The new open data initiatives will arm them further, but they will also arm regular citizens. If information is power, we might be about to see a leveling of the playing field. Except there is one big problem: indifference. Most people will not do anything with that data. The ones who are most motivated to use the data about to be unleashed are exactly the special interests who run Washington today. They will use any new data or two-way policy mechanisms to further their own interests or those of their well-heeled clients. Do the rest of us stand a chance? Just because government is edging towards more openness doesn’t mean it can’t still be gamed. People will try. Will the rest of us let them? Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
MojoPages Raises $5 Million For White Label Local Business Search Engine Top
MojoPages, a local listings search engine, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Austin Ventures. MojoPages’s search technology powers local business listing search engines for local newspapers, and TV and radio stations. Originally a stand alone search engine for business listings, the company found that it could not compete with bigger players like Citysearch and Yelp. So Jon Carder, CEO of MojoPages, decided to overhaul the site’s business model and offer white label, branded local search engine technology to media companies. The site’s listings are similar to Yelp in that they offer user reviews and ratings of businesses. To date, MojoPages has contracted with more than 1,000 media sites to create branded local business search engines. Carder says MojoPages will use the funds to expand the capabilities of its Yelp-like search engine, so that the search engine will become an aggregator of listings and reviews. The site hopes to pull local info from sites like Yelp, CitySearch, and YellowPages into one engine. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Recommend Your Favorite iPhone Apps With AppsFire Top
A couple weeks ago, we wrote a post detailing why there needs to be some sort of iPhone app recommendation system . Just like iTunes has its “Genius” feature for music and movies, with over 50,000 apps now in the App Store, there needs to be a way to filter out what you don’t want and find what you do. If you have a lot of friends with iPhones or iPod touches, AppsFire may offer just that. The service, launching in private beta today, allows you to share your favorite apps with anyone. Now, to be clear, I don’t mean actually share the apps themselves, but rather share the names of the ones you like and give others one-click access to download them also, from the App Store. So, say I have 100 apps on my machine, but I only really would recommend 15 or so, I would select those 15, and could send them out to friends on the various social networks. AppsFire is actually an application that you install on you machine. Right now, it only works on Macs, but it’s coming for PCs soon. And there will event be an iPhone app, we’re told. Once the software is on your machine, it scans your iTunes folder to find your apps. It then opens a personal webpage on the AppsFire site and places the icons for your apps in front of you, asking you to choose your favorites. Once you do that, you can share them using the social networks, via email, in a widget, or simply get a link back to your AppsFire page. For example, here’s the link a co-founder of AppsFire, Ouriel Ohayon’s page . It’s hardly a perfect system. First of all, the sharing mechanisms are a little clunky. And this isn’t a way to get personally tailored app recommendations based on what apps you already have an like. But it is a way to potentially find some new and interesting applications based on what people you know enjoy using. The model for this is straight-forward: Affiliate links (through LinkShare and Tradedoubler), though Ohayon promises a “surprise” in that regard soon. The limited private beta will be open to about 1,000 users at first, we’re told. You can sign up here . Disclosure: AppsFire co-founder Ouriel Ohayon is a former member of the TechCrunch family, and still contributes from time to time. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
$6 Million For Sense Networks? Makes Sense. Top
Intel Capital has led a Series B funding round in Sense Networks , a NY-based developer of nifty machine-learning technology that allows for digital indexing and ranking of real world locations based on movement data. According to Venturebeat , which broke the news before the weekend, the amount invested was about $6 million in a ‘hotly contested deal’ that left Sequoia pulling the short straw. Having recently witnessed a panel discussion at the Mobile 2.0 Europe conference on ‘Context’, which Sense Networks CEO Greg Skibiski was a part of, I’d wager it’s a smart investment. The startup has developed Macrosense , a so-called ‘location analytics platform’ specifically designed to mine mobile location data for advanced user segmentation, and it also markets a really great free mobile app for BlackBerry and the iPhone platform called Citysense that enables ‘real-time nightlife discovery and social navigation’. In essence, the latter app helps consumers find popular nightlife spots using large amounts of real-time location data in aggregate. From Erick’s review when the company first emerged out of stealth mode : “The company ingests billions of data points about people's location from cell phones, GPS devices, WiFi, and even taxis. The company also collects geo-location data from everyone who downloads Citysense, or any future app (although, the company considers the data to be yours, and you can delete it from the database at any time). Using machine-learning algorithms, it then indexes all of this location data and ranks places in the real world much like a search engine ranks Websites. But instead of looking at Web links, it looks at how much data (i.e., people) are moving between locations. The company makes money by selling this data in the aggregate to professional investors and financial institutions, who are keen to find out things like where people are shopping.” Sense Networks was founded by MIT computer scientist Alex Pentland and Columbia computer scientist Tony Jebara back in May, 2003. The company was only incorporated in 2006, though, and it went on to raise a Series A round from a number of angel investors and hedge funds like Passport Capital, Drobny Global Asset Management and the Challenge Funds in April 2008. The amount was not disclosed, but VentureWire reported that it was $3 million, which means total funding for the company now stands at about $9 million . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
6rounds Launches Video Communication Platform With Several Layers Of Fun Top
With a webcam built into or sold together with nearly every computer that goes over the counter nowadays you’d expect direct video-based communication to have massively taken off by now, but the reality is that it’s far from being as ubiquitous as some proclaimed it would become in the past. But maybe it’s just that there’s isn’t always that good a reason to video chat with your friends and family when you can just as easily use voice call or text chat to communicate with them directly. After all, once you’re connected you can just as easily get your message across without actually seeing someone. But Israel-based 6rounds thinks that there is a demand for a video platform that offers additional layers of fun, social interaction and utility on top of the basics of video conversations, and they’ve raised the necessary funds to bring the idea to market. CEO Dany Fishel and COO Ilan Leibovich tell me that they view 6rounds essentially as a live meeting point that comes with real-time video chat but also a set of additional features that should enhance the “sharing experience”. Sharing can mean anything from co-browsing YouTube to playing games, adding funny effects to a live video conference, interacting on Facebook together with your contacts or even shopping for things online together with your friends or family members. You really need to try it to experience how much fun that can be, and for that reason we’ve arranged invitation codes for 500 TechCrunch readers . Simply head over to this webpage and enter code "6techcrunch". If you’re too late, check out these screenshots and a short demo video below to get an idea of what 6rounds is all about. 6rounds is not just a mere destination site, and wants to enable users to interact socially in real-time regardless of what their favorite social network is. The platform comes with an open API and can easily be integrated into third-party websites or services – starting with a Facebook or MySpace app, continuing with a plugin for WordPress or an embeddable widget in users personal pages, and ending with various extensions to IM, ICQ, Skype and Firefox. It also does a fine job at tapping into your social networking accounts to build a profile for yourself that indicates your interests, hobbies, music and movie taste etc. When you’re in a video chat you can click a button and a question will be proposed based on the profile of the person on the other end. This could be useful as an ice-breaker when you’re having a conversation with someone you don’t know very well yet. Sounds all fine and dandy, but how will they make money? The founders explained to me that they see four different revenue streams for 6rounds: 1) users could purchase virtual and real gifts (think ringtones, MP3s, etc.) and send them to other users during the video experience. 2) users could personalize their video experience by purchasing customized skins and choosing different applications for private arenas (unique games, targeted extensions and special activities). 3) affiliate fees from e-commerce majors: from music, movies, TV shows and books through the personal profile slideshows to a dedicated co-shopping experience in a variety of online retail stores. 6rounds aims to earn revenue shares from these transactions and allow other developers to tap into this stream by means of the open API. 4) advertising, licensing and product placement: the company at a later stage intends to offer advertisers licensed versions of 6rounds as well the ability to insert video advertising units within the layers (think sponsored gifts, targeted activities, and promoted themes). The company just closed a seed investment of $1 million , led by Rhodium Investment Group and followed by private angel investors from the Israeli Startup Factory group, who previously invested $350K (November 2008). The founders had initially founded the startup with the help of family and friends on some $150K back in February 2008. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Ricoh Launches Visual Online Storage Service quanp Top
If you’re like me, you always try to avoid storing or backing up files, even those that are important to you. It’s too boring, time-consuming and cumbersome to remember doing it regularly. This is where a new service called quanp (short for “quantum paper” and pronounced "kwan-puh"), launched today in beta, comes in. Developed by Japanese technology giant Ricoh , quanp wants to become your online center for collecting and organizing all of your personal “digital life memories”. Dropbox and many other services basically do the same, but the idea behind quanp is to turn storing and sharing pictures, music, videos, PDFs etc. online into a more enjoyable experience by making it more “visual”. The service is currently free and as Ricoh says, mainly aimed at US residents for the time being ( in Japan , quanp is available in free and paid versions since March). The US version is being managed by a Ricoh office based out of Cupertino in California. The structure of the quanp site is a tad confusing, but you basically get a suite of three tools : quanp.on (a Windows-only online storage client) quanp.net (a browser version) quanp drop (a desktop widget) Here is a quick rundown: quanp.on I had to unearth my Windows machine for quanp.on , but once installed ( system requirements ), the software works as promised. It lets you drag and drop, tag and date files you can then navigate through a pretty “3D” interface (Ricoh calls this 3D visual browsing). Files can also be easily shared with other quanp users over the web. quanp.net Definitely not as sexy as quanp.on or the widget, this browser version (for Mac and Windows users) doesn’t offer anything similar services have been offering for years. quanp drop "quanp drop" is an animated, customizable widget that sits on your Mac or Windows desktop ( system requirements ) and allows you to share files by dragging and dropping them into it as if you’re adding files to a folder. You need to register in order to then manage and share these files. quanp drop also requires Adobe AIR to function. Ricoh says these beta versions of their tools are mainly aimed at geeks and heavy web users whose opinions the company wants to use as a basis for further improvements. So give one of the tools a shot (personally I recommend the widget and the client version), follow them on Twitter , and post your feedback in the forum (or write an email ). The following video provides more background on the service. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Social Browser Extension Yoono Adds OneRiot's Real-Time Search Engine Top
Yoono , an extension built to enhance both the Firefox and IE browser experience that comes in pretty handy when you go on the Internet mainly to interact socially with your peers and friends, has just released version 6.1 of its add-on, and revamped the interface along with adding a couple of useful features. I’ve been trying it out for a couple of hours now, and I have to say I’d already miss it if it were gone from my Firefox browser (which, admittedly, I use less and less thanks to Google Chrome). Yoono is essentially a browser sidebar that aggregates and centralizes your online profiles, including from IM tools like Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk and AIM but also a wide variety of social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, FriendFeed and more. The latest version of the extension, next to expanding support for Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace as well as the ability to easily share pages, images, or videos from your browser across all networks at once, boasts another useful new feature: real-time search . The search engine is powered by OneRiot , one of many trying their hand in this hot field but effectively one that does what it does very, very well . Granted, this isn’t exactly a huge innovation (doing a search simply opens up a new browser tab with results from the OneRiot website), but people who already use Yoono will no doubt be pleased with the integration. Try it out and let us know what you think. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
The iPhone 3GS: Should You Get It? Top
Disclosure: I have not bought an iPhone 3GS — I'm still unsure if I will . Apple gave me a review unit to play with for 60 days. I’ve had the new iPhone 3GS for a little over a week now. Using it day-to-day over the course of that time, I have a pretty good feel for it. A good enough feel to answer the question that every single person seems to be asking: “Should I get it?” The answer to that is not so simple. And so I’m going to break it down a bunch of different ways based mainly on the device’s functionality and who I think is considering buying it. I’ll lay out what someone may be interested in the device for, and then give a “yes” or “no” (or a couple “maybes”) answer on if I think it’s worth it. I’ll follow that up with an explanation. Here we go: If you have an original iPhone from 2 years ago? Yes. Yesterday marked the two-year anniversary for the people who bought the original iPhone on day one in 2007. That also means it marks the official end of those people’s contracts with AT&T (though many are eligible to end them, or get upgrades much earlier). If you’ve had your original iPhone this long, chances are that you’re a fan of it. And if you’re a fan of that version, you’re going to love the iPhone 3GS. Not only will its computing speed blow away that version, but since you skipped the iPhone 3G, you haven’t experienced the big increase in data speed that 3G offers over EDGE. I’ve talked to a few people who upgraded from the original iPhone to the iPhone 3GS, and all of them cannot believe how much better then device is in its third iteration. If you have the iPhone 3G? Maybe. There are simply too many variables at play here to answer this with a simple “yes” or “no.” I’ll address many of them below. But the biggest one for many users right now will be if you’re eligible to get the full $199 and $299 subsidy on the device. Even after AT&T’s relaxing of the rules a bit, most iPhone 3G owners still are not able to get the subsidy yet . If you cannot, I say wait until you can. If you can get the cheaper price now, the iPhone 3GS is probably worth it — if you don’t mind signing your soul over to AT&T for another 2 years. Which leads me to… If you have never had an iPhone? Yes. It’s an easy call if you want an iPhone and have never owned one, as this is the best one yet. Definitely get one, unless you have a strong dislike of AT&T. If so, skip to the next question. If you hate AT&T? No. This is a big “no.” If you really dislike AT&T, the iPhone 3GS only gives you more reasons to dislike them. MMS still isn’t working. Tethering still isn’t working. The iPhone 3GS has a chip that can handle data transfer speeds of 7.2 Mbps, but AT&T’s network isn’t ready for that, so that data speed is the same as with the iPhone 3G. And that faster AT&T network won’t fully be ready until 2011 — obviously, there will be at least one, and probably two more iterations of the iPhone by then. And there will likely a version of the iPhone that is not exclusive to AT&T by then as well. That possibility alone should be reason for a lot of people not to sign up for a new two year contract with AT&T. And unfortunately, that means no iPhone 3GS. If you love video? Yes. This is a big, emphatic “yes.” I truly believe the iPhone 3GS should have been called the iPhone 3GV, for “Video.” The device is simply great at shooting quick videos and giving you one-button publish capabilities to services like YouTube. While there were some video applications that worked on older jailbroken iPhones, like Qik, the quality of the video with the 3GS is leaps and bounds better. And the trimming capabilities on the phone are very simple to use. And playback looks great on the device. I could go on, but as I said already, if you’re really into video and want a great mobile device for doing it, the iPhone 3GS will be worth it for you. The Flip cam should definitely be scared . If general speed is your only reason? No. The iPhone 3GS is noticeably faster than the iPhone 3G, but in my opinion, that speed alone is not worth the upgrade price. One problem is that while apps do load faster, you still have to wait for AT&T’s often shoddy network to connect for many of the apps to work. As I noted above, the iPhone 3GS can handle faster wireless data speeds too, but AT&T’s network isn’t yet up to the same task, so it renders that advantage moot. I have found myself getting frustrated with using the iPhone 3G after using the 3GS for a while due to the speed difference, but that’s only because I have a point of reference. If you haven’t used a 3GS yet, or don’t use it extensively, you shouldn’t have too much of an issue staying with your iPhone 3G (or buying a new one for $99 ) and still taking advantage of the new features in the 3.0 software upgrade. If you’re really into iPhone games? Yes. Having said all of that about speed, if you’re really into gaming on the device, the faster processor and better graphics chip will undoubtedly be worth it for you. I’ve been playing a bunch of games on the 3GS, including some larger ones like Tiger Woods PGA Tour, and the iPhone 3GS performs much, much better than the iPhone 3G does. If you’re a developer? Yes. Likewise with the gaming, if you’re a developer making apps on the iPhone, you’ll undoubtedly love the faster speeds the 3GS offers. Plenty of developers, such as Facebook’s Joe Hewitt , are already raving about this . If battery life is your main reason? No. The battery life on the 3GS does seem to be better, but it’s hard to know if that’s just due to the fact that this is a fresher battery compared to the one in the year-old iPhone 3G. Apple has stated that the battery in the 3GS does boost times for certain things (like browsing the web on WiFi), but it also apparently is leading to some overheating . I’ve also noticed that the auto-brightness setting on the iPhone 3GS is much dimmer than on the iPhone 3G. I’ve done a number of tests to make sure I wasn’t just seeing things, or it wasn’t a one-time fluke. For whatever reason, the iPhone 3GS is much dimmer when auto-brightness is turned on, and this undoubtedly saves some battery life too. The dimmer setting doesn’t bother me at all until I look at it side-by-side with the the iPhone 3G. The iPhone 3GS also has a feature that allows you to tell you the percentage of your battery has left. This is a pretty nice feature, but it does get a bit nerve-racking . If you have very oily hands? Yes. This may sound like a joke, but the iPhone 3GS’s new oleophobic (anti-oil) screen coating really is making a noticeable difference on my iPhone’s screen. While you may assume that my iPhone 3G has a dirtier screen simply because it’s older, I had a protective covering on the screen up until the day before I got the iPhone 3GS, so basically the screens were in the same condition a week ago. Now, one is constantly much more dirty. If you’re excited about voice control? No. The voice control feature would seem to be a nice touch, but it’s pretty wonky in my experience with it. More than a few times I’ve tried to tell the device to play music by a certain band, and it will end up calling someone — and without fail it is usually someone I really don’t want to be calling. The “play more songs like this” which kicks in the iTunes Genius features is by far the best part of the whole thing. Otherwise, it’s just a system that is too slow to activate, and too inaccurate. If you want a better cameraphone? Yes. While I’ve already raved about the video capabilities, the camera itself is so much nicer than the iPhone 3G’s. This camera is 3.2 megapixels compared to the old version’s 2 megapixels. But the real difference is with the auto-focus, which turns crap pictures, good. The camera isn’t as nice as some of the ones found in phones by Nokia, but it’s definitely good enough for your average point-and-shooting in good light. If you want more storage? Yes. There’s no denying that having 32 GB (on the more expensive model) versus 16 GB is nice. I remember buying my first iPod five years ago — it was a hard-drive based model with 40 GB of storage. The thing was a brick. Now the iPhone has just about as much storage, which is pretty crazy. And considering you can now not only shoot movies on this device, but can download them from iTunes with the 3.0 software, you might need that extra space. For the compass? No. Don’t get me wrong, the compass is interesting, but aside from Google Maps and maybe the GPS apps, I really don’t see the point of it. And for the first few days I had no idea how to activate the compass features in Google Maps — you have to tap the location button (in the lower left corner) twice. I hope some applications arise that do cool things with it, but I certainly wouldn’t buy the device for this. Overall? Maybe (See Above). As I said, there’s really no clear-cut answer as to if you should get the device. You really need to look at the functionality and use cases above, and determine where you reside with regards to those things. If you think a bunch of stuff is missing from the list, you’re probably thinking about features that are a part of the iPhone 3.0 software. Most of those work on the older iPhones as well. If something like cut, copy & paste is most important to you, that works on the iPhone 3G, so it probably makes sense to stick with that device. Or if you don’t have one, consider paying $99 to get one — that seems like a hell of a deal . If you’re a really big fan of the iPhone, you probably already bought this new model. But it’s the fence-sitters that this post is meant to help. Both those who are unsure if the time is right to get their first iPhone, or if it’s worth it to upgrade. It’s a tough call — but simplified: If video is the feature you most care about, then get it. If not, consider the iPhone 3G for $99. If you’re worried about AT&T, don’t get either — wait to see if Apple renews its exclusive deal with AT&T next year. Even if it does, you can be sure another phone, more advanced than the iPhone 3GS, will be on the verge of being revealed. 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Swedish Software Firm Acquires The Pirate Bay For $7.7 Million Top
Swedish software firm Global Gaming Factory X this morning announced it has agreed to buy file-sharing service The Pirate Bay for 60 million Swedish crowns (which currently converts to approx. $7.7 million). In addition, GGF has entered into an agreement to acquire the shares in Peerialism , a software technology company that develops solutions for data distribution and distributed storage based on new p2p technology. The transaction is scheduled to be closed in August 2009. Update: The Pirate Bay has confirmed the news (see their commentary below). Last April, the founders of The Pirate Bay were sentenced to one year in jail and a fine of $3.6 million for running the site, which is one of the world largest for downloading files on the Internet (one of the 100 most visited websites in the world according to the press release). The case had been brought on by a number of groups from the music and movie industry. For that reason, GGF has stated that The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which “satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary.” Global Gaming Chief Executive Hans Pandeya didn’t give a lot of detail about what type of business model it has planned for the file-sharing service, and only said: “We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site.” We’re gathering more information and will update this post accordingly. Statement from TPB: “A lot of people are worried. We’re not and you shouldn’t be either! TPB is being sold for a great bit underneath it’s value if the money would be the interesting part. It’s not. The interesting thing is that the right people with the right attitude and possibilities keep running the site. As all of you know, there’s not been much news on the site for the past two-three years. It’s the same site essentially. On the internets, stuff dies if it doesn’t evolve. We don’t want that to happen. We’ve been working on this project for many years. It’s time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody. We need that, or the site will die. And letting TPB die is the last thing that is allowed to happen! If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That’s the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to. And - you can now not only share files but shares with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That’s awesome and will take the heat of us. The old crew is still around in different ways. We will also not stop being active in the politics of the internets - quite the opposite. Now we’re fueling up for going into the next gear. TPB will have economical muscles to let people evolve it. It will team up with great technicians to evolve the protocols. And we, the people interested in more than just technology, will have the time to focus on that. It’s win-win-win. The profits from the sale will go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openess of the nets. I hope everybody will help out in that and realize that this is the best option for all. Don’t worry - be happy!” Update 2: TorrentFreak was informed by TPB’s Peter Sunde that the site will soon decentralize and quit running a properietary BitTorrent tracker, instead encouraging its user base to use a yet to be launched third party tracker for their torrents. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 

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