Tuesday, August 18, 2009

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Polyvore Looks Stylin' In This New $5.6 Million Round Of Funding Top
In a world where print media is collapsing, it would seem that fashion magazines could easily make a case for why they’ll still exist in the future. As great as their content may or may not be, a large part of their success is about seeing the pictures of the hot new fashions. But there’s an online site that arguably does that better too, Polyvore . And they just got a big bag of new money to expand their service. The service, which just crossed 4 million unique visitors and 150 million pageviews a month, allows web shoppers to pull their favorite items any online store and mix and match to create personalized outfits online. Users can then share their creations with friends, and, most importantly, anyone can then buy the items shown. This social side of shopping has users engaged. The average visitor spends 10 minutes on the site each time they log on, we’re told. The new $5.6 million Series B round is led by Matrix Partners , alongside previous investors Benchmark Capital and Harrison Metal Capital . Previously, the site had raised $2.5 million from Benchmark, Harrison Metal, Reid Hoffman, and Nirav Tolia. Polyvore launched in 2007 , founded by a bunch of ex-Yahoo employees. Since then, it has expanded the team with some talent from the likes of Google and Intuit. The plan for this new money is to further expand the engineering and sales teams, and to promote growth. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Android v. iPhone Religious Battle Rages Within TechCrunch Top
If you think the posts about me quitting the iPhone are just a stunt, think again. I’ve been using the TMobile myTouch for a couple of weeks now and haven’t looked back at the iPhone at all (background apps + full Google Voice Integration is awesome). But resident Apple fanboi and general iPhone enthusiast MG Siegler refuses to agree that Android > iPhone. We spend hours debating it internally on Yammer, although mostly we devolve into personal attacks. Comments like the one to the left are about as deep as MG is able to dive. A thread from earlier today is below. Read from the bottom up - the post I refer to, which basically describes MG perfectly, is here : Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Center'd Brings Its Local Discovery Engine To The iPhone Top
Center’d , the service that looks to help you figure out what to do with your day, has released a new iPhone application that lets you tap into the site’s restaurant, event, and activity recommendation engine on the go. The application is free and you can grab it here . Center’d competes with sites like Yelp and CitySearch , but instead of simply offering text reviews, the service scours the web for reviews and descriptions and performs semantic analysis on them, allowing you to perform more detailed searches than you could on other sites. In my testing I found the app’s manual search mode, which lets you search by keywords, to be pretty hit-or-miss. During one search for “large portions” Center’d pulled up a list of matching restaurants, but the app didn’t do a good job explaining why it thought they had large portions (you’d expect it to display any relevant text in its database, but it didn’t). In fact, when I looked through the details of the top hit for “large portions”, that restaurant’s top keyword was “small plates”. Go figure. Search leaves something to be desired, but that doesn’t mean the app isn’t worth checking out. Its City Guides functionality, which lets you search using a number of pre-set filters, is actually quite helpful. To use it, you first choose a description of what you’re looking for (options include things like ‘Kid-friendly’, ‘Romantic’, and ‘Outdoors’). Then you choose the type of venue you’re looking for, be it a restaurant, event, shopping or attraction. The app pulls up a list of matches, and for the most part I found these to be pretty accurate — a search for kid-friendly restaurants in Palo Alto pulled up local favorite ‘The Creamery’ as the top result, and the app also made it easy to pull up a list of local bars with outdoor patios. Aside from the iPhone app, Center’d is seeing strong growth, though its traffic is still pretty modest. Since April the service has doubled its traffic. Also worth checking out is Yelp’s new iPhone application , which includes deals from local merchants. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
140 Characters? That's A Lot Of Writing. Just Post A Picture On DailyBooth Top
It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Translated into this Twitter world we now live in, that’s like, thousands of characters. Thousands easily beats 140, so the people constantly complaining about Twitter’s brevity need to check out DailyBooth . What is it? It’s a Twitter-like quick message service, only the main form of communication is pictures. You can send pictures of anything you want, though most users tend to send images of themselves, photo booth-style, and attach messages to them. The result is a crazy amount of interaction in the community. And interestingly enough, unlike Twitter , it seems to be a hotbed for teenage activity. While there have been no shortage of startups that have launched picture services for Twitter, the Y Combinator -backed DailyBooth is a little different in that it tries to stand on its own by emphasizing its own social stream (though there is Twitter tie-in as well). In that regard it’s more like Radar than TwitPic or some of the other standard Twitter photo services. But Radar places an emphasis on cameraphone pictures, as I said, DailyBooth seems to be populated more by photos of people taking pictures of themselves, sitting at their computers. Though you can upload pictures from a mobile device as well. And DailyBooth’s growth has been pretty amazing. As you can see in the chart below, since its launch in January, DailyBooth has grown to over 3 million unique visitors a month. And they have a growth rate now of about 35% a month, which means they should easily hit 4 million uniques this month, founder Jon Wheatley tells us. One reason for this growth has to be the active community. I uploaded one picture last night around 2 AM, just my standard profile icon, and it almost immediately got 8 comments even though no one was explicitly following me. This morning, my inbox was bombarded by notifications from DailyBooth, new pictures notifications, new follower notifications, recent activity on my pictures, etc. Sure, that was a little annoying (you can change the email alerts in your settings), but also nice to see such a new community with that kind of activity. Y Combinator’s Paul Graham says that at one point they had considered a name change for DailyBooth, but then realized just how engaged the community already was with the service (the picture at the top is just one example), and that a name change may have caused a revolt. The service recently added a bunch of new features including the ability to send DailyBooth images to many of the major social networks. And you can automatically set your latest DailyBooth picture to be your MySpace or Facebook profile picture. I often find myself clicking on pictures posted to Twitter even if I don’t really know the person. And one of the main features I’ve liked of FriendFeed and now newer services like Brizzly is that they put pictures sent to Twitter inline, so you don’t have to click anywhere to see them. DailyBooth takes that one step farther and makes it all about the pictures. And it does so in a simpler and more social atmosphere than a site like Flickr. The results seem to speak for themselves in their growth. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Ow.ly And Bit.ly Fastest, Most Reliable URL Shorteners. Tr.Im Comes Up . . . Short. Top
When it comes to shortening links, the brevity of the URL is not the only factor you should consider. Speed and reliability are also important. After all, the main purpose of URL shortening services such as bit.ly and TinyURL are to redirect you back to the original (long) link someone shortened in the first place. You want the redirect to be fast and reliable. The rise of Twitter and its character constraints has made URL shortening services popular. But which one is the best? Royal Pingdom decided to conduct a test over the past 30 days to put nine of URL shortening services through the paces. Overall, Ow.ly and Bit.ly came out on top, while Tr.im came in dead last (no wonder nobody would buy it ). Pingdom tested two things: the average time it took each service to load a page (overhead) and its uptime. The fastest service was actually Is.gd (with an average load time of 163 milliseconds), followed by bit.ly (261 milliseconds) and ow.ly (289 milliseconds). Tr.im was the third slowest after Cli.gs and Snip.url . But when it comes to reliability, Tr.im had nearly twice the estimated yearly downtime as the next worse service ( Twurl ). Even with nearly 80 hours of estimated annual downtime, Tr.im still had 99.10 percent reliability. Ow.ly, however, had 100% uptime, and bit.ly came in second with 99.98 percent. (Is.gd came in fifth). When both the reliability and speed rankings are combined, ow.ly and bit.ly tie for first place overall, followed by Is.gd and Su.pr . Here is the complete ranking (the scores are the rankings for each test added together): Overall Ranking Ow.ly: 2 Bit.ly: 2 Is.gd: 3 Su.pr: 3.5 TinyURL: 4.5 Twurl: 7 Snipurl: 7.5 Cli.gs: 7.5 Tr.im: 8.5 Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Is Mint Going After Freshbooks? Its New Features Point In That Direction. Top
Personal finance tracking site Mint.com added a bunch of new budgeting and trending features today. Mint presents consumers with a financial dashboard based on spending and income data from their bank, credit card, and other financial accounts. It expanded its charts to include spending over time, income history, asset allocation, and net worth over time. You can now plan for irregular expenses such as property taxes, auto insurance, or vacations. Budgeted items can be rolled over into the next month if they haven’t been used up, and Mint now figures out your income based on your paycheck. It takes all of this data and projects your savings or shortfall over time. All of these new features will be appreciated by Mint’s 1.4 million registered (and 550,000 active) users, but they also point to a new direction for the site: bookkeeping for small businesses. Mint now has pretty robust reporting for personal expenses, income, and savings. These same tools could very easily be tweaked to help small businesses track costs, revenues, and profits. All Mint needs to do is change the names of the categories, and add an invoicing feature to go after basic accounting sites like FreshBooks or Outright , which are in turn going after Intuit’s more fully-featured QuickBooks . For entrepreneurs with limited time on their hands, the ability to track both personal and business finances in one place would have obvious appeal. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Sneak Peek At Facebook for iPhone 3.0 Top
Facebook for iPhone version 3.0 will hopefully soon be made available through the iTunes App Store , but lead engineer Joe Hewitt has apparently already graced the team over at Appadvice with an early look. Check out their review for more details, but here’s the gist: - A new home screen (see first screenshot above) which will offer the ability to customize i.e. add boxes to the default start screen - A better ‘News feed’: much more complete overview of status updates from your friends, but still lacking the ability to hide/unhide them from inside the app - Videos ( as expected ): uploading video supposedly works like a charm, but you still can’t watch Facebook videos unless they’re actually hosted on YouTube (and likely other video hosting platforms as well) and simply played from inside the app - Events ( as expected ): includes the ability to RSVP, but you can’t visit the complete event wall, which is unfortunate - Pages: you can search for, view and interact with pages using Facebook for iPhone 3.0 - Photos: you can create new photo albums, upload photos to any album, zoom into photos and change your profile picture - Communication: you can quickly or call people straight from the Friends page - Improved ‘liking’ feature - Notes, including the ability to edit them - Notifications: much better, link directly to comments which you can respond to - Messages you are typing will be restored if you quit the app or are interrupted by a phone call Here’s to hoping for a quick green light from Apple. Update: also got confirmation that there’s no landscape mode in this version. Update 2: a lot more screenshots are available here . (Via @Appadvice ) Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Not A Myth To Bust: Discovery Channel Hits The App Store Top
Scientist wannabes, rejoice! Discovery Communications has released a Discovery Channel application on the iTunes App Store ( link to the program ), bringing heaps of video content produced by the popular non-fiction media company to the iPhone and iPod Touch. In addition to video clips, the app also boasts a collection of quizzes, photo galleries, programming schedules and updates from Discovery News. Furthermore, you can use the app to share content via e-mail and save to favorites for your re-watching pleasure. Evidently, full episodes for Discovery’s top programming (Shark Week, Man vs. Wild, MythBusters, etc.) are not available through the free yet ad-supported application, but it does come with links to the iTunes Store where the media company offers a selection of full episodes for purchase. The Discovery Channel app was built by Rhythm NewMedia , which has already built apps for many media companies, including AMC, E! Online, Entertainment Tonight, Family Guy, HGTV, TMZ and more. CrunchBase Information Discovery Communications iPhone App Store Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Another MVNO Bites The Dust: Qwest Discontinues Wireless Service Top
Over and out for the MVNO model? Qwest has this morning announced that it will be shutting down its Wireless service on Oct. 31, 2009. Formerly in bed with Sprint , Qwest started offering the wireless service in collaboration with Verizon just over a year ago. Under the agreement, Verizon Wireless phones and services were offered to Qwest’s residential and business customers. Qwest customers who switch to a new service provider within the 60-day period will be able to transfer their wireless phone numbers to their new provider of choice, and there is no early termination fee when disconnecting from Qwest Wireless. According to the fact sheet (PDF), Qwest started transitioning Qwest Wireless customers to Verizon Wireless in August 2008 and has since switched “tens of thousands of customers”. More information is available here . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Social Gaming Startup Scoreloop Closes $2.8 Million Round Top
Scoreloop has closed its second financing round, with a $2.8 million / €2 million cash injection from new investors Earlybird and existing investor Target Partners , which was the seed funder for the Munich-based company. The funds will be used to fuel the growth of the company and to establish (or solidify) its position, especially in the realm of the iPhone. Since launching its technology in May 2009, Scoreloop has over 500 registered game developers that have published more than 40 Scoreloop enabled games in the iPhone App Store. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
You Won't Find Putin On Russia's Gogul Top
Gogul (sound familiar?) a new project specifically designed for safe searching and surfing for children has launched in Russia - but it has shades of China’s infamous Green Dam project. The new online service, consisting of a search engine and Internet Explorer add-on, allows parents to control their kid’s internet access - in other words it’s a kind of Net Nanny. But parents aren’t fully in control here. The “approved content” consists of over 7,000 Russian web sites which are filtered by a slightly shadowy team. Plus, Gogul has already provoked a lot of - largely negative - feedback on Russian forums over it’s name (er, Google anyone?) and ideological connection with an infamous government project called School Portal . For instance, you can’t even search on the word ‘Putin’. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
The Perfect Birthday Gift For A Man Running For Attorney General? $39 And Britney Spears. Top
Facebook’s (now former) Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly doesn’t have to worry about frivolous privacy lawsuits any more. That’s because he’s moving on to run for Attorney General of California in the 2010 election. His Facebook campaign page is here . Today, apparently, is Kelly’s 39th birthday. I know this because I was forwarded an email from his wife Jennifer asking recipients to donate to Kelly’s campaign. I don’t agree with some of Kelly’s positions (he was on the wrong side of Facebook’s Holocaust denial debacle, in my opinion), but I’m contemplating endorsing him for the position pending his agreement to go on camera with us and answer some key questions we and our readers have. Generally though Kelly is a libertarian-leaning Democrat, which is kind of Democrat I tend to like. If you want to donate to his campaign, here’s the link . And if you’re feeling generous, you can get Chris something else for his birthday, too. Like this special edition Britney Spears “Womanizer” virtual gift on Facebook, which costs just $3. Happy Birthday, Mr. Attorney General (I bet he loves the sound of that). And please don’t forget us when you make it big time. If you become president someday, I wanna be on the Supreme Court. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Layar Shows Augmented Reality Revolution Is Going Global Top
In Amsterdam today, the makers of mobile Augmented Reality (AR) browser Layar announced version 2.0 of the browser as well as a slew of new layars which have been produced since they opened up their API to developers . A ‘layar’ is information overlaid on the camera view of your mobile phone, e.g. the asking price of an apartment for sale in the building your camera is pointed at. Layar will be pre-installed on the new Samsung Galaxy Android phone about to be released in the Netherlands and the Android version of the browser is available for download in the Android app store. The iPhone version will be available as soon as Apple updates its API to allow access to the iPhone camera. The Layar event was opened by science fiction writer and Wired editor Bruce Sterling who has been blogging recently about the augmented reality scene, appropriately enough. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Six Apart Equips TypePad For Microblogging, Posterous-Style Top
Microblogging is one popular type of cake, and Six Apart damn well wants a piece of it too. The company has just added a new element to its TypePad offering: a so-called ‘microblog-style blog’ , which I imagine could just as well simply be dubbed a microblog. If you know what Posterous is and does, it’s easy to explain what the new TypePad feature does: exactly the same. If you’re a TypePad user, you can now post by e-mailing in an article or using your iPhone to publish whatever short posts, links, videos and pictures you want to put up on the web easily and rapidly. And you can just as easily push the content back out to other services such as Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed while you’re at it, which is entirely in line with what Posterous has been all about since its inception. To complement the new feature, Six Apart is also adding some new custom themes to TypePad, starting with the Pico template the company introduced yesterday. The only difference with Posterous that I can see is the support and training Six Apart provides with its TypePad service and the fact that you can add advertising units to your new mini-blog, although I can’t imagine this will convince many individuals to actually pay for a microblogging service when there are so many free alternatives. Or will it? Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Invites: Fotoglif Opens A Revenue-Sharing API For Ad-Supported Images Top
Stock photography sites are moving towards free, with either free samples ( Photoxpress ) or ad-supported images (Fotoglif, GumGum, PicApp). In an effort to encourage a broader distribution of its ad-carrying photos, Fotoglif is opening up a revenue-sharing API for developers. The first 500 people to sign up using the promotion code “Techcrunch” will get into the beta program. The API gives developers access to millions of photos and related data, which they can mashup into widgets and other apps. The developers get to keep 20 percent of any resulting AdSense dollars generated by the images. Fotoglif pays the photographers 50 percent, and publishing sites another 20 percent, which doesn’t leave much for the startup. The ads are little contextual text ads at the bottom of the image. They are not horrible, but they aren’t beautiful either. Attaching ads to stock photos is a good idea, but these companies still need to work on presentation. Maybe that is where a developer using the API can help. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Jambool Raises $5 Million For Its Social Gold Micropayments Platform Top
Jambool , the startup behind the Social Gold micropayments platform, has closed a $5 million funding round led by Madrona Venture Group, with Bay Partners participating as well. The company has now raised around $6 million, after a $1 million round in Q3 2008. Jambool initially started off as a developer for games on social networks — a lucrative but very crowded space that includes players like Zynga and Playfish . In fall 2008, the company decided to switch its focus from game building to providing a platform that other developers can use to quickly integrate microtransactions. That suite of products, collectively referred to as Social Gold, now includes an an in-game payment system that includes support for credits cards, mobile payments, and online transaction systems like PayPal and Google Checkout; a virtual currency system; and a set of analytics tools for developers to track their in-game economy and performance. Going forward the site plans to offer a subscription product in the new future, as well as more self-serve options for developers. There are a number of other startups looking to help monetize the social web with micropayments, which include Gambit and OfferPal . These companies also have to worry about social networks launching their own payment platforms (Facebook has one that has been in testing for a few months), though companies like Jambool have the advantage of being able to offer a ‘universal currency’ that works across multiple social networks. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
The Best And Worst Cities To Look For A Job Top
The unemployment rate in the U.S. was still 9.4 percent in July , but some cities are better than others to look for a job. Of the top 50 metro areas, Washington, D.C., is the easiest for unemployed workers to find a job, while Detroit is the hardest, according to a new Job Market Competition index put together by job search engine Indeed . The index ranks cities based on how many unemployed people there are compared to job listings. For every one unemployed person in Washington, D.C., for example, there are six job postings. Whereas in Detroit, there is only one job posting for every 18 unemployed people. The higher the ratio of job postings to unemployed, the more chances there are of landing a job. The top ten cities in the index for finding jobs (and their corresponding ratios of job postings to unemployed) are: Washington, DC (6:1) Jacksonville, FL (3:1) Baltimore, MD (1:1) Salt Lake City, UT (1:2) New York, NY (1:2) San Jose, CA (1:2) Hartford, CT (1:2) Oklahoma City, OK (1:3) Austin, TX (1:3) Boston, MA (1:3) The worst ten cities for job searches are: 41. Buffalo, NY (1:6) 42. Orlando, FL (1:6) 43. Sacramento, CA (1:6) 44. Rochester, NY (1:6) 45. Chicago, IL (1:7) 46. Portland, OR (1:7) 47. Los Angeles, CA (1:8) 48. Riverside, CA (1:9) 49. Miami, FL (1:10) 50. Detroit, MI (1:18) Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
New Privacy Lawsuit Throws The Kitchen Sink At Facebook Top
A new lawsuit filed against Facebook in the Superior Court of California in Orange County is one of the more entertaining documents we’ve had the pleasure of reading recently. A lot of lawsuits against Facebook are fairly serious, but this one certainly isn’t — we haven’t seen litigation this amusing since the Attorney General of South Carolina set his sights on Craigslist to kick-start his campaign for governor. Plaintiffs in the case appear to have engaged in run of the mill socializing on Facebook: sharing photos, writing status updates and similar things. They’re then complaining that privacy, copyright and other rights are violated as people look at the photos, read the updates, etc. It’s sort of like jumping into a pool and then complaining that you’re wet. The lawsuit complains about or at least insidiously describes pretty much every single part of Facebook, from the nefarious “wall” to a potentially incriminating “Data Analyst” job listing the company posted in 2007. Oh, and the best part? The AP and WSJ just reported the case straight, without the slightest suggestion that the Plaintiffs might be a little off. We’ve embedded the full, 40 page suit below. So what are the Plantiffs accusing Facebook of? The suit alleges that that Facebook is at its core a “data mining company.. [that] seeks to open and/or disseminate private information to third parties for commercial purposes and economic benefit” and that “Facebook has created a business model and apparatus designed to harvest as much personal and private information as possible in easiest, quickest, and most innocuous-looking manner possible.” Cue the ominous music. It gets better. The complaints from the individual Plaintiffs involve everything from swine flu to “accomplished actresses”. We’ve excerpted a couple of them below. “Plaintiff Xavier O. is an 11-year-old minor residing with his parents in Orange County, California. Plaintiff Xavier O. has a Facebook account that was opened without the knowledge or consent of his parent or guardian. Plaintiff Xavier O. has uploaded personal information, videos and photographs, including swimming and/or partially clothed photographs of children ages 5 to 11. On or about August 8, 2009, Plaintiff Xavier O. posted “Xavier O. has swine flu… Please pray for me… God Bless.” Upon learning of the Facebook account and the posting of an uncertain medical condition, Plaintiff Xavier O’s parents removed the medical condition posting from Facebook. Xavier O. and his parents have been unable to learn where the minor’s medical information may have been stored, disseminated or sold by Facebook.” Plaintiff Elvina Beck is an accomplished actress and model residing in Los Angeles, California. Plaintiff Beck has multiple commercial representatives/agents for print, commercial and theatrical work. Plaintiff Beck’s name, likeness and photos are highly valuable commercial assets. Plaintiff Beck appears in national print advertisements, commercials and films, and she is compensated for such work. Beck’s filmography includes Love Hurts, Privileged, CSI: New York, and ESPN 25. Plaintiff Beck’s digital images have been disseminated by Facebook without her consent, knowledge, or compensation. Another Plantiff is apparently objecting to the fact that Facebook has changed over the years from a college-only social network to a much broader one, and is unhappy with the way the site’s Terms of Service were modified over the years. Except it’s quite common for sites to change their ToS without giving notice. There goes that idea. In short, the Plantiffs are complaining about many of the very mechanisms that make Facebook a social network. They’re also complaining about issues that have been addressed before — some of the concerns over content ownership issues are pretty explicitly spelled out in the site’s Terms , which state “You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how we share your content through your privacy and application settings.” There may be some nuggets of validity hidden in here, but you’re going to have to look hard to find them. Facebook has given us the following brief response regarding the suit: We see no merit to this suit and we plan to fight it. Image by Goleta on Flickr. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
And Google Said, Let There Be Chrome Bookmark Sync Top
As promised , Google has just launched bookmark syncing for users on the dev channel of its Chrome web browser. This allows you to keep your browser bookmarks in sync no matter which of your computers you are using. Syncing has been a standard feature of Apple’s Safari browser for some months now, but you need to have MobileMe for it to work. And Firefox users could download add-ons like Xmarks (previously called Foxmarks) to get the functionality, but with Chrome it will be built-in, and most importantly, unlike MobileMe, free. Google notes that the bookmarks are stored on users’ Google account alongside Google Docs and sync via XMPP. To get the feature working, you apparently have to launch the dev version of Chrome with the “–enable-sync command-line flag”. If you understand what that means, you’re good to go. If not, you’ll probably want to wait for the feature to hit the regular release channel, something that will probably happen relatively soon. Bookmark management appears to have been temporarily disabled on the latest versions of Chromium for Mac, after they were first turned on last week . When they come back, hopefully this syncing will work for Macs as well. To stay up-to-date on the latest versions of Chromium for Mac, check out our updater tool . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Facebook Share Buyback Oversubscribed, Ex-Employees Take The Hit Top
Just in from a source involved with the transaction - the $100 million Facebook Employee share buyback has been oversubscribed (its not clear by how much), and ex-employees are being cut back significantly. The program was announced on July 13. Up to $100 million in employee common stock was to be purchased by Russian investment group Digital Sky Technologies , which also funded a separate $200 million venture investment in May 2009. Employees, ex-employees and other common stockholders could participate, and had to indicate their intention to sell by early August. People were limited to selling up to the lesser of 25% of their total holdings or $1 million. Shares are being purchased based on a $6.5 billion valuation. Employees were given first dibs on stock sales, we’ve confirmed. Ex-employees were notified up front that they’d be able to sell only after current employees. And it turns out it made a difference - the ex-employees were cut back to “a small fraction” of the original amount requested. Some executives and larger shareholders may be able to sell additional stock via a separate arrangement, says our source. Facebook declined to comment on this post. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Before There Was Twitter, There Was Blogger. And It's Turning 10. Top
What were you doing in 1999? Maybe you were following the Kosovo War. Maybe you were starting to use Napster. Maybe you were entering your senior year of high school (I was). Or maybe you started blogging. After all, on August 23, 1999, Pyra Labs launched its Blogger product, which would go on to become the biggest blogging platform in the world. Yes, on Sunday, Blogger turns 10 years old. And to celebrate, the Blogger team (which is now a part of Google following a 2003 acquisition) is promising a bunch of gifts to users in the form of new features. Without naming anything specifically, Blogger points to this list as a good reference point for some of what they’ll be rolling out over the next few weeks. Of note on that list are a better commenting system and WordPress-style pages (About page, etc). It’s worth noting that Blogger’s roots are deeply tied to the new hot web platform of choice: Twitter. Pyra Labs was co-founded by Evan Williams , who is now the CEO (and co-founder) of Twitter. Also a part of Pyra Labs were Jason Goldman who now runs product development for Twitter, and Jason Shellen who now runs Thing Labs , the makers of Brizzly , a much buzzed-about new Twitter client. Biz Stone , another Twitter co-founder, joined the Blogger team at Google before leaving with Williams in 2004 to start Obvious Corp. which would eventually birth and turn into Twitter. (An interesting side note is that Williams’ Pyra co-founder Meg Hourihan , eventually married Jason Kottke , who is best known as being one of the web’s most popular bloggers.) These days, while the web is abuzz over Twitter, no one really talks much about Blogger despite millions of people using it everyday. The fact is that as a platform, it has fallen behind the more nimble blogging platforms like WordPress and Tumblr in recent years. Still, in terms of straight up simplicity in setting up a blog, it’s easy to see why Blogger is still popular among users (and, unfortunately, spammers). Update : As as Faridur notes in the comments, current Twitter Creative Director Douglas Bowman also worked on the Blogger team back in the day . CrunchBase Information Blogger Google Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Bing's Marketshare Continued To Creep Upwards In July Top
Another month, another report that Bing is chiming slightly louder. Analytics firm comScore has just released its latest figures on search market share, and once again Microsoft’s search engine has managed to grow while its competitors have seen modest losses. Bing launched to the public on May 31, when Microsoft held 8.0% search marketshare. Over the course of June and July, the site has gained nearly a full percentage point — it’s up to 8.9%, and growth was actually higher for July than for June, when the site was getting all of its launch attention. Of course, Bing’s marketshare still pales in comparison to Google’s dominant 64.7%, but at least Microsoft is heading in the right direction. Once again, it looks like Bing’s gain comes at Yahoo’s expense, at least to some extent. Since May, Yahoo has dropped from 20.1% to 19.3%. Google has dropped a more modest .3%, from 65% to 64.7%. We saw a similar pattern last month, when we pointed out that Yahoo was losing marketshare both from below (Bing) and above (Google). Since then though, the landscape has changed dramatically: Yahoo search will soon be powered by Bing . When the Yahoo/Microsoft search deal was announced Yahoo EVP Hillary Schneider discounted the impact of this market share erosion, stating, “seeing Bing as a live experience was a nice assurance but did not change our rationale or timing.” But it’s hard to believe that Bing’s strong start didn’t have an impact on the deal. Once that deal comes to fruition Bing will have to face the real test: can it continue to take market share away from Google, or will it simply continue to eat away at itself as users move from Yahoo’s portal to the Bing homepage? Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
The G1 Burned Out Long Before The Android Ever Did Top
Let’s not beat around the bush: The G1 was not a very good phone. That’s not to say Android isn’t a good mobile OS — it is, it’s just that the initial hardware built to run the OS didn’t do it justice. It was poorly designed and had a fairly cheap feel. And now, it appears that the G1 may already be on its last legs as Android engineers aren’t sure if the phone will be able to handle the upcoming updates to the Android OS. While nothing is set in stone yet, it’s looking pretty grim. The latest “Cupcake” Android update apparently pushed the G1’s memory to the limit. And subsequent updates should only require more. But what’s crazy about this is that the G1 was launched just 10 months ago . Certainly, the devices will keep working with the current flavor of Android, but just imagine the pain early adopters must feel if their device is already a dinosaur that they can’t upgrade, not yet a year into its release. I’ve used the G1 pretty extensively, having obtained a demo unit from Google shortly after its launch. From just about day 1, I didn’t like it . The obvious comparison was to the iPhone, but it was a hard one to make since the devices were so different. The G1 had a physical keyboard, no multi-touch support, and could run applications in the background to name a few things. The better comparison is to the so-called “G2″ also known as the “Google Ion” or the myTouch 3G. That device, also built by HTC, is similar to the G1 but improves on it in just about every way . It’s faster, thinner (thanks to the removal of the awful keyboard), has better battery life, and just feels nicer. The myTouch is actually the device Mike switched to after rejecting the iPhone , and as I hear from him every time I see him, he loves it . I don’t hear anyone say that about the G1. Sure, there are plenty of people who use it, and some like it, but I think all would concede that there are better phones out there. And if they won’t yet, when a new Android update comes out that the G1 can’t handle, I’m sure they will. So big deal, a phone that a few hundred thousand people use is passing away before its time, right? Well the issue behind it is a potentially much larger one. The G1 going out of date speaks to a problem the Android platform has: Its open nature and the desire to support as many phones as possible is always going to leave some devices out in the cold. Of course, that is hardly an Android-only problem, it’s a problem with just about every platform besides the iPhone. While the original iPhone has been out for over 2 years now, it was still able to be upgraded to the latest iPhone firmware, 3.0, this year. Granted, some of the features were disabled because the hardware has evolved, but it can still do the majority of things that the other iPhones can do. With so many different devices, and many more said to be coming by the end of this year, the Android platform will continue to get fragmented in a way that is likely to be confusing to consumers. And that doesn’t even speak to the fragmentation of developers developing for phone-specific features of Android devices when more come out. Of course, there are upsides to this openness, and we should see plenty of applications and features that aren’t available on the relatively-closed iPhone. But it’s a tricky trade-off if consumers are buying a device that they’re not sure will work with all the applications on the platform, and worse, the newest versions of the OS itself. Really, I just wanted to write a eulogy for the G1. I’m looking forward to some good Android phones in the future, the G1 was not one of them. [photo: flickr/ rainer ebert ] Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
iLike Deal Puts Facebook In Lose/Lose Situation Top
As more details emerge about the MySpace-iLike acquisition , all sorts of interesting observations and questions pop up. A few thoughts: The Facebook Angle This is by far the most interesting angle to the deal. iLike is the most popular music application on Facebook, and is the de facto Facebook Music app . That company will shortly be owned by MySpace, Facebook’s primary competitor. That puts Facebook in a lose-lose situation. They can let iLike continue to dominate the music scene on Facebook and let MySpace own all that. Or they can ban iLike and lose all credibility with their platform - everyone would know iLike was banned because of the acquisition by MySpace. And it doesn’t have to be an outright ban. Facebook has plenty of subtle ways of trainwrecking an application they don’t like. Keep an eye on this. Why didn’t Facebook just buy iLike? A matching or slightly better offer than the $20 million MySpace is paying would likely have gotten the deal done. And it may have saved Facebook from an embarrassing situation. If I were MySpace, I’d focus on getting their free streaming music into the iLike Facebook application as soon as possible. Advertisers will love it. This deal also shows what a top Facebook app is worth. Most of iLike’s activity comes through Facebook. They have 10 million monthly active users, and 31 million total Facebook installations (iLike has a total of over 50 million registered users). MySpace has valued that and the rest of iLike at $20 million, but has to factor in the possibility that Facebook will derail the application, subtly or overtly. If that risk wasn’t there, my guess is iLike would be worth 2-3x as much. Why is MySpace and not MySpace Music buying iLike? We’re hearing two reasons.The first is that MySpace Music, a joint venture with the music labels, isn’t going too well. The venture will lose at least $20 million this year on the back of massive royalty payments to the labels, and when the Google search deal ends next year the financial prospects of MySpace Music may get much, much worse. The last thing MySpace wants to do is put good money after bad and throw more assets into MySpace Music. Plus, the deal would likely have required notice to, if not the approval of, the label partners who own equity in the joint venture. There’s another reason being talked about by our sources as well, though. iLike isn’t just about music and music recommendations. The platform they’ve built to facilitate artist-to-user publishing and user-to-user recommendations can be used for content beyond music, such as videos and games. Our guess is MySpace intends to integrate iLike’s technology into more than artist pages. So having the assets at MySpace makes sense. MySpace Now Has Its Own Music Download Deals With Labels. iLike launched its music download store last week. MySpace Music has streaming rights to music but not download sales rights. Today Amazon powers MySpace Music downloads . I’m sure MySpace is now considering (or already decided to) moving to a direct sales approach via iLike’s deals and software. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 

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