Wednesday, August 26, 2009

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Palm Wants To Embrace Google Voice, But It's Not Clear Google Wants To Embrace Palm Top
Suddenly Apple’s competitors see a weakness in the iPhone, and it’s Google Voice . We’ve heard from a source close to Palm that the company plans to roll out deep integration with Google Voice on the Pre phones for users who want it. That could convert a lot of iPhone users to the Palm Pre fast. But there’s just one problem: at this point, Google isn’t building an app for the Pre. Google Voice gives users a lot of freedom with their phone - they can ring several mobile and landline phones at once through one number, manage text messages, auto-transcribe voicemails and also block/manage callers depending on who they are and when they are calling. Want to switch phones or carriers? If you use Google voice, you don’t have to port your phone number or tell everyone what your new phone number is. Which is exactly why Apple fears it . What really makes Google Voice useful is when it integrates deeply with native apps like the dialer and contacts. That way all outbound calls use the Google Voice phone number (and caller ID) instead of the phone number associated with the phone. When it works perfectly, as it does with Android phones , the underlying device phone number is more like an IP address for a website - it’s there but no one uses it. Your Google Voice phone number is more like the domain name, which everyone remembers and associates with you. We’re hearing that Palm wants that deep integration to lure iPhone users to the Pre, and our source said it would roll out an official app some time in the next month or so. But from what we hear from sources close to Google, no one there is actually working on a Google Voice app for the Pre. They have apps for Android and Blackberry (and iPhone in purgatory), but that’s it. Officially Google is saying “ Google is interested in bringing the mobile experience of its products to many platforms, including Palm, as we have for the Palm Pre with Google Search, Google Maps, and YouTube built in, as well as easy sync to Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Contacts. We look forward to providing a mobile experience for more Google products to Palm Pre users.” But our understanding from other sources is that Google only intends to roll out a browser based version of the service for Pre, which lacks the deep integration with native apps like the dialer and contacts. The user experience isn’t nearly as good. There are already third party Google Voice apps for the Pre, such as this one , but again, those apps can’t integrate deeply with the phone. That’s because Google Voice has no API right now, so Google has to build deep integration apps directly. So what we’re left with is this - Palm really wants Google Voice for the Pre, but it isn’t at all clear that they’re going to get it any time soon. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Balihoo Raises $7 Million To Help National Brands Market Themselves At The Local Level Top
Balihoo , a service that looks to help national brands efficiently market themselves at the regional level, has closed a $7 million funding round led by OpenView Venture Partners, with existing investors Highway 12 Ventures and Lacuna Gap Capital also participating. The new round brings Balihoo’s total funding to over $12.5 million since getting started in 2006. Balihoo is a service that allows national brands to automate local marketing efforts — campaigns that have tradionally been run by franchises and affiliates. This setup can lead to a lack of consistency in branding between different regions, as well as excessive costs as regional franchises effectively have to remake the same advertisements. To help streamline these efforts, Balihoo offers an ad builder than can generate advertising for various types of media, and tools for ad fulfillment and planning, among other things. National brands can manage these efforts, granting access to their local affiliates to keep them in the loop. Balihoo says that these can help reduce overall marketing costs and improve brand recognition by increasing consistency. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Yahoo Gets With The Program, Finally Lets You Play Videos In Search Results Top
There’s always been a tension in search between organizing information for users and getting out of the way so they can get to that information as quickly as possible. With text links, getting people to the correct page as fast as possible usually produces the best experience. But when it comes to video, which is a self-contained form of information, a better search experience is to be able to play the video right in results. Otherwise, in addition to clicking back and forth until you find the video you want, you are also adding the delay of playing the video. Video search sites like Blinkx and Google Video (yes, that is still around) figured this out ages ago. And Bing’s video search lets you play a video simply by hovering over the thumbnail, or you can click to enlarge for a more satisfying viewing experience. Now Yahoo is finally getting with the program. Today it added inline viewing to video search. For most videos, you can click play, and it opens up a large rectangle with a slightly larger player inside. It will also sometimes offer thumbnails of related videos inside that rectangle so that you can continue exploring and drilling down on a video-by-video basis. None of this going to change the fact that 90 percent of you will continue to search on YouTube when you are looking for a video on the Web. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
CrunchBoard: Yelp, MTV Networks, and More! Top
If you're on the hunt for a new job, check out our CrunchBoard . We've added nearly 50 new jobs from leading internet businesses in the last two weeks. Here's a quick sample: Product Designer Sharethrough - San Francisco, CA VP, Products TokBox, Inc. - San Francisco, CA UI Product Manager Yelp, Inc. - San Francisco, CA Sr. Engineering Manager Kodak Gallery - Emeryville, CA Operations Manager, Digital Media International MTV Networks International - New York, NY For job hunters in Europe, check out our Europe CrunchBoard. Click here to see all the jobs on CrunchBoard. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TechCrunch50: Don Dodge, Paul Graham, Jason Hirschhorn and Mike Schroepfer join Panel of Experts Top
We’re pleased to announce Don Dodge (Microsoft's Emerging Business Team), Paul Graham (Cofounder of Y Combinator), Jason Hirschhorn (MySpace Chief Product Officer), and Mike Schroepfer (Facebook VP Engineering) will be joining our on-stage panel of experts at TechCrunch50 . They’ll judge the fifty launching startups in front of a crowd of 2,000 or so eager attendees. They’ll join the already announced expert lineup of Marc Andreessen, Roelof Botha, Ron Conway, Reid Hoffman, Tony Hsieh, Marissa Mayer, Tim O'Reilly, Sean Parker, Kevin Rose, Robert Scoble, and Yossi Vardi. This will be Don’s third year judging. Paul, Jason, and Mike will be making their first appearances. And we’re not stopping here - additional judges will be announced next week. All the details for the conference are here . TechCrunch50 is an action-packed conference where fifty new startups launch over two days. The event will be held at the San Francisco Design Center, a huge and beautiful venue where we packed nearly 2,000 participants last year. Tickets for the event can be purchased here courtesy of Eventbrite. We've slashed our early-bird prices from 2008 to $1995 through August 31. (Prices escalate to $2,995.) If you’re interested in demoing your product, we have a few spots left in our DemoPit ( e-mail us for details). Additionally, exhibitor passes are available for $8,000, which include entry to the conference for 4 people, a 5' exhibitor table, and other goodies . More on the TechCrunch50 blog . Don Dodge Don Dodge is a veteran of five start-ups including Forte Software, AltaVista, Napster, Bowstreet, and Groove Networks. Don is currently Director of Business Development for Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team . Don has been in the software business for more than 20 years. He started his software career with Digital Equipment, aka DEC, in the database group. He worked with 5 software start-ups over the next 12 years. Forte Software was the first multiplatform object oriented development environment. AltaVista was the first search engine on the web. Napster was the first P2P file sharing network. Bowstreet was the first web services development environment. Groove Networks was the first secure P2P collaboration platform. Now he is at Microsoft… “the biggest start-up in the world”… working with VC’s and start-ups in the greater Boston area. Paul Graham Paul Graham is an essayist, programmer, and programming language designer. In 1995 he developed with Robert Morris the first web-based application, Viaweb, which was acquired by Yahoo in 1998. In 2002 he described a simple statistical spam filter that inspired a new generation of filters. He’s currently working on a new programming language called Arc , a new book on startups, and is one of the partners in Y Combinator . Paul is the author of On Lisp (Prentice Hall, 1993), ANSI Common Lisp (Prentice Hall, 1995), and Hackers & Painters (O’Reilly, 2004). He has an AB from Cornell and a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard, and studied painting at RISD and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence. Jason Hirschhorn Jason Hirschhorn is Chief Product Officer for MySpace . As one of the company's foremost senior leaders, Jason is dedicated to transforming the MySpace brand and product by providing an unparalleled user-experience. His unique approach emphasizes innovation, rejects the notion of the media company as tastemaker, and lets the audience guide the direction of product and content offerings. Mike Schroepfer Mike Schroepfer is the Vice President of Engineering at Facebook . Mike is responsible for harnessing the engineering organization's culture of speed, creativity and exploration to build products, services and infrastructure that support the company's users, developers and partners around the world. Before coming to Facebook, Mike was the Vice President of Engineering at Mozilla Corporation, where he led the global, collaborative, open and participatory product development process behind Mozilla’s popular software, such as the Firefox web browser. Mike was formerly a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems where he was the Chief Technology Officer for the data center automation division (”N1″). He was also the founder, Chief Architect and Director of Engineering at CenterRun, which was acquired by Sun. Mike worked with several startups at the outset of his career, including a digital effects software startup where he built software that has been used in several major motion pictures. Mike holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degrees in computer science from Stanford University and has filed two U.S. patents. Great partners make great conferences We’re really lucky to have the corporate support of some of the best names in the business. Sequoia Capital , Charles River Ventures and Perkins Coie all returned quickly to support us for the third year in a row. Google , Founders Fund , Microsoft and MySpace are back for their second year of partnership, and this year Bing stepped forward as a first-time partner. Additional partners will be named in the next few weeks. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Branchr Advertising Acquires Online Collaboration Software Maker Atomplan Top
Branchr Advertising , the CPC (cost per click) based internet advertising company that allows fair ad distribution without contracts or setup fees, has acquired small business project and contact management application Atomplan (formerly Avecora OnDemand ), we’ve learned this morning. Financial details were not disclosed, but Branchr Advertising Director/Founder Christian Owens mentioned that the deal was a cash and equity acquisition. Atomplan is a small business organization and team collaboration suite, delivered on the web, on-demand. Among Atomplan features are task and deadline management, group messaging, calendar, contact management and allocation, wiki pages, and Twitter-style status updates. The service was formally run by startup Avecora , which is now moving its focus from web applications to consumer electronics, we’re told by the company’s 17-year old CEO Mark Bao . Branchr self-reports currently serving 100 million ads per month, across more than 2,300 websites. Its competitors include Fusion Ads , which claims to have served nearly 18 million ad impressions last July, and The Deck . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 

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