Monday, August 17, 2009

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MSNBC Picks Up Hyperlocal News Aggregator EveryBlock Top
Even though they haven’t really found a big audience yet, hyperlocal news sites are becoming a hot commodity. In June, AOL bought Patch for $7 million, and today MSNBC acquired EveryBlock . EveryBlock was previously funded by a grant from the Knight Foundation, which ended in June. The five employees will now work at MSNBC. The price was not disclosed, but like the Patch acquisition, it is not an audience acquisition. Rather it is a hyperlocal platform play which MSNBC can now plug into its site and push in a major way. EveryBlock is a hyperlocal news aggregator, bringing in geo-specific feeds from neighborhood blogs, Flickr, Yelp, Craigslist, and elsewhere to give readers a picture of what is going on in their town or neighborhood. EveryBlock currently covers only about 15 cities in the U.S. and comScore estimates its U.S. audience to be only 143,000 unique visitors a month (July, 2009). In contrast, competitor Outside.in attracts 800,000 unique visitors in the U.S. These are relatively small numbers, but these services do a good job of collecting neighborhood news without the expense of actually reporting it. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
CrunchGear's Snow Leopard Preview: Not a Major Overhaul But Lots Of Work Behind the Scenes Top
We're a few weeks away from the official release of Snow Leopard and I'm here to tell you things are really heating up in the realm of Exchange Support, OpenCL, and being able to click on an icon to make all of its windows appear. Sorry. I'm just a crank. Every time Apple comes out with a new version of OS X I expect bells, whistles, and dancing dogs. This is an incremental upgrade, as we described it back at WWDC, and it's a strong one. However, it's not nearly as exciting at first blush - at least visually - but it does give countless IT guys some serious tentpole action especially considering built-in Exchange support. This review is based on the purported Gold Master, 10A432, the version that will be shipped to stores world-wide this September. It may or not be the official final version but I've been using versions of Snow Leopard for about two months now.
 
BlogTalkRadio Will Have A Huge Guest This Week: President Obama Top
BlogTalkRadio is a popular podcasting site with about 4.5 million listeners a month. And it’s no stranger to large-scale live podcasts, as some pull in more than 20,000 listeners while they’re going on. But on Wednesday, the service is likely to see their popularity taken to the next level as none other than the President of the United States will be on a program live for the site. President Obama will be making an appearance on a special program called “ 40 Minutes For Health Reform ” which will stream live exclusively on BlogTalkRadio. Specifically, the President’s part will be the last 10 minutes of the show after he listens in on the first 30 minutes during which there will be a roundtable discussion about the topic with the leaders of the non-profit group, Faithful America. Faithful America are the ones that came up with the idea of doing a program on BlogTalkRadio, as they were looking for a platform to have moderated dialogue in a social media environment. The White House was open to the idea as they look to garner support for their health agenda. It’s a subject which has gathered quite a bit of controversy in the past few days, as there is talk that the administration may have to back away from some of its original plan. For many of its shows, BlogTalkRadio utilizes social media outreach via the normal channels: Twitter, Facebook, etc. But this program should spread faster than the others given that the President will be on it talking about something which is now somewhat controversial. Still, the administration hasn’t shied away from using these new forms of communication to get messages out even though things aren’t quite as controlled as they might be with the standard outlets. " I've been impressed by how President Obama has adopted innovative social-media technology during his campaign and into his administration, " says Alan Levy , CEO of BlogTalkRadio. " We're honored that he has selected BlogTalkRadio as his newest requisite platform for communicating directly with the American people. " The show will air live on Wednesday at 5 PM ET (2 PM PT) on both BlogTalkRadio’s program page found here , and on the Faith For Health site. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Breaking: MySpace Close To Acquiring iLike For $20 Million Top
MySpace is close to acquiring popular social music service iLike , we’ve confirmed with multiple sources. The deal, which should close this week, will be MySpace’s first acquisition since new CEO Owen Van Natta took control of the company in April 2009. The price is “around $20 million.” iLike, which launched in late 2006, is a social music recommendation service that now has more than 50 million registered users. It tracks what you listen to and like and gives you recommendations on new music based on that data as well as what your friends are listening to. It is the top music application on Facebook, Bebo, Hi5 and just about every other social network other than MySpace, which has MySpace Music . iLike also hosts band pages which are second in popularity only to MySpace Music. By acquiring iLike, MySpace solidifies their already leading position as the most popular online identity for bands. Last week iLike also launched their own music download store . Details are still flying in, but at first blush the deal is particularly interesting for two reasons. First, simply because iLike is so deeply integrated into the Facebook experience. Nearly 10 million Facebook users use the iLike application every month. And iLike has also been a key part of Facebook’s ongoing struggles with what-to-do-about-music . MySpace is now going to own this. Second, it’s MySpace, not the MySpace Music joint venture with the music labels, that is acquiring iLike. We’ll have more to say on this shortly. We’re hearing that a key driver of the deal is the iLike team, particularly founders Ali Partovi , Hadi Partovi and Nat Brown , and the underlying technology. Competitor Last.fm was acquired by CBS in 2007 for $280 million. June 2009 Comscore stats show Last.fm with 12.9 million monthly unique visitors. iLike had just 3 million monthly unique visitors, but that doesn’t take into account the massive usage of the service on social networks. The company has raised a total of $16.5 million from the founders, Scott Banister , Bob Pittman , Vinod Khosla and Ticketmaster to date. But their last round of funding was in 2006, where Ticketmaster put the bulk of the capital in via a third round of financing that valued the company at a whopping $53.2 million. In Q4 2008 Ticketmaster wrote down a number of their venture investments, including a $5.8 million charge for iLike. Internally, they valued that $13.3 million investment at just $7.5 million. Last month we reported that iLike was considering a new round of financing that would cash TicketMaster out of the company. Neither MySpace nor iLike would comment on this story. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Zendesk Raises $6 Million In B Round, Benchmark's Peter Fenton Joins Board Top
Benchmark Capital is investing in Danish startup Zendesk , and led a $6 million B round of funding. Benchmark’s rock star partner Peter Fenton is joining the board. Zendesk just raised money in May in an A round from Charles River Partners, which also participated in this latest funding. The company offers Web-based help desk services for companies to offer support to their customers. It is an online ticketing system for customer support, which is free for under 50 customers but then ramps up in price depending on how many support agents a company needs. Corporate customers include Rackspace, Condé Nast, Twitter, MSNBC and Scribd. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
CBS, Amazon Already Sniffing Around GDGT Top
It’s less than two months old , and GDGT is already getting some high profile attention, and maybe even a few acquisition sniffs. One of our reliable sources told us today that they had reason to believe both CBS/CNET and Amazon were considering acquiring the company. After some digging, we’ve confirmed that CBS has considered investing in GDGT and that their subsidiary CNET has ongoing partnership discussions, but isn’t considering an acquisition right now. Amazon, though, is more interesting. They’ve been doing quiet background due diligence on GDGT’s founders and developers, we’ve heard, which is an indication that they may be interested in buying. Amazon has experimented with pure content sites the last few years, launching a bunch of blogs and even buying UK-based DPReview , a camera review blog, in 2007. Content, particularly reviews, are great for SEO and cross promotion. And to Amazon’s credit, they haven’t defiled DPReview much at all. …and GDGT is certainly off to an amazing start. They had a massive 4.7 million pageview traffic day back in June, before they launched the main site. Compete shows a nice spike in U.S. visitors, without the usual post launch sag (yet). GDGT was founded by former Engadget editors-in-chief Peter Rojas and Ryan Block . Last summer we broke the news about the new venture. The company has raised around half a million dollars in an angel round led by True Ventures and Betaworks , plus a number of angel investors. GDGT declined to comment on this story. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
How To Test The Limits Of Your Privacy On SpinVox Top
Having witnessed the extent to which humans are involved in transcribing messages for SpinVox (the voicemail to text service), I have become concerned about the privacy of my data and personal communications. Although I’ve now cancelled my SpinVox subscription, I know (because CIO Rob Wheatley told me) that SpinVox, like Google, keeps data - which in SpinVox’s case means recordings of your messages - “for as long as possible”. Based on a quick search of my inbox, I reckon SpinVox are holding recordings of about 250 messages that were left for me between April and July of this year. But that’s not really the problem. After all, Google knows a lot more about me than that and I’m sure my ISP and the government do too. My concern is that I believe the majority of my messages were listened to by a person I don’t know in another country. That’s the point at which SpinVox may be falling foul of UK and European data regulations, and it’s the weak link in the privacy chain. So it’s time to find out if SpinVox is being honest enough with its customers about the proportion of messages that are read by humans - and also about how much of those messages are seen by call centre staff. Here’s how: Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
MySpace Gets More Pearl Jam Love: Exclusive Short Documentary Debut Top
Last month, our post about MySpace debuting Pearl Jam’s new single turned into a debate over who could rightly claim to be the true kings of grunge. Regardless of where you stand on that, let’s agree that Pearl Jam’s new album is starting to sound great. How do I know? Because a few more songs have just been unveiled by way of the new short documentary about the making of Backspacer , that debuted tonight exclusively on MySpace once again. Check the video out below. It features the new songs “Got Some” and “Just Breathe” on top of the first single off of the album, “The Fixer.” As a bonus, there’s some nice footage of the band doing some axe throwing. Pearl Jam’s new album will be out in about a month. Pearl Jam - Backspacer Short Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Wakoopa's State Of The Apps Report: Don't Hassle A Geek After 4pm Top
Wakoopa tracks your desktop application usage in order to recommend new software, games and web applications. It has two main groups of users: professionals and hedonists. The professionals are using it to track their working hours, while hedonists use it to track their gaming. These users are stereotypical early adopters; what they use today we may all be using tomorrow. The company just released its latest State of the Apps Report showing trends in application usage in Q2 2009. The report is based on 110K users of which 88% are male, although female users account for half of the top users. So what’s new? Well, Firefox has clearly won the browser war in this group with 55% of users. It is the most popular browser across all platforms. Facebook is the dominant web site with 17.9% of usage time followed by Gmail at 10.5%. Interestingly, although Twitter usage is growing steadily it still only accounts for 4.32% of usage time even though 25% of Wakoopa users are on Twitter - too busy developing to hang our on Twitter? Speaking of which, we get a window into the lives of how developers work, which may well interest a few startups trying to motivate their teams after 4pm. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Yahoo Veterans Launch Rocket Fuel, A "Hybrid" Ad Network Top
A team of Yahoo veterans who built its behavioral targeting advertising technology are publicly launching a hybrid ad network today called Rocket Fuel , which they’ve tested over the past year with major brands including Nike, Dell, Microsoft, and American Express. Despite keeping quiet, Rocket Fuel’s ad network reaches 40 million people and shows them about 100 million ads per month. CEO George John calls Rocket Fuel a “hybrid ad network” because it combines all sorts of targeting data (social, behavioral, contextual, geographical, search) to figure out what works best at any particular moment. “We saw how important it was to let the data tell you which ad to show,” says John, who came from Yahoo along with president Richard Frankel and CTO Abhinav Gupta. Rocket Fuel’s algorithm considers everything from a consumer’s online behavior and location to the time of day and what particular ad was shown. If people who listen to electronica music are more likely to click on an ad than those who listen to jazz, or people who log in from work respond better than people from home, Rocket Fuel tries to ferret out those details and feed them back into the mechanics of the ad campaign. John explains: We let the data tell us what works and what is important. Instead of inflicting on customers thousands of targeting options, we figure out which options are working well and move inventory in that way. Sounds simple enough, but apparently this is not the way most ad targeting is done. Instead, advertisers and ad agencies typically are given a confusing array of targeting options and are left to their own devices to sort through them all. Rocket Fuel is automating that testing process and speeding up the feedback loop so that advertisers can hone in on whatever combination of targeting is working at that second. But does the world really need another advertising network, hybrid or otherwise? If Rocket Fuel can deliver better advertising campaign ROIs, advertisers will give it a shot. That’s all that matters. If it can’t, it won’t make it off the launchpad. The companyl raised $6.8 million in a series A round a year ago from Mohr Davidow, Labrador Ventures, and individual angel investors. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
Y Combinator Starts Seeding Ideas To Startups Top
Y Combinator sees no shortage of startups that apply to be a part of their funding cycles. But they don’t always see all the ideas they’d like to see come out of the classes. So starting with the upcoming Winter 2010 cycle, they have a new idea called RFS, Requests For Startups. Basically, Y Combinator will issue some ideas of what they’re looking for in any cycle, and will accept the ones that pitch the best way to do the idea. Now, to be clear, Y Combinator will not be forgoing its usual method of combing over any and all startup pitches outside of the ones they lay out. “ We don’t expect responses to RFSes will ever be more than a fraction of the applications we accept. We wouldn’t want them to be. Most good ideas should be ones that surprise us, not ones we’re waiting for, ” Paul Graham writes on the site today . The hope is that this will help guide some new startups without solid ideas in the direction of something that is missing in the market. Or encourage ones that already have a similar idea to apply. Y Combinator’s RFSes won’t describe exactly what Y Combinator is looking for, but rather will give a general idea, with the hopes that the startups can come up with even better plans than Y Combinator is thinking of, Graham says. So what is the first RFS? Well, it’s something near and dear to our hearts: The Future Of Journalism . Y Combinator is wondering what the online content sites will look like in the future when print publications are gone . Certainly some, like TechCrunch, have gotten large enough to support themselves now, but most content sites are still built on the notion of content first, monetization later. Y Combinator notes that in the heyday of print media, the approach was often the opposite, there was a business plan in place before the launch. It believes that approach can still work, and has laid out a rough outline of what it’s looking for from startups that want to do this: Groups applying to work on this idea should include at least one writer who can write well and rapidly about any topic, one or more programmers who are good at statistics, data mining, and making sites scale, and someone who’s reasonably competent at graphic design. These functions can of course be combined, and in fact it’s even better if they are. Xooglers would be particularly well suited to this project. This RFS is just the first of 3 to 5 that Y Combinator hopes to get out there before the October 26 Winter 2010 class application deadline, Graham tells us. Startups applying specifically for these RFS ideas will be able to indicate that on their applications. Graham notes that Y Combinator has sort of passively given ideas to startups in the past, like this , but thinks this new explicit call will lead to some interesting things. We asked Graham if this new approach means these types of startups will get different financial deals from Y Combinator. “ Not significantly, ” Graham says. “ Execution matters so much more than the idea that even if we supplied the entire idea we wouldn’t be entitled to more than 10% of the company, ” he notes. On his post he gives a bit more: We might ask for a little more equity from startups responding to an RFS, because we’d expect to contribute more to them. But at most a percent or two, and often nothing. Ideas count for something, but execution matters far more. [photo: flickr/ eran finkle ] CrunchBase Information Y Combinator Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Firefox 3.5 Not Playing Nicely With Twitter Top
Firefox 3.5, which we’ve ranted about recently , is not playing nicely with Twitter. In fact, for the last week at least users (including me, including today ) have had a lot of problems updating status messages and following new people if they use Firefox 3.5. The site just hangs forever. Twitter knows about the issue and says they’re working on it. And the odd thing is that the issue seems to come and go. The worst part about this is that Twitter was actively promoting Firefox 3.5 downloads in July, and a lot of Twitter users are probably using it. This version of Firefox alone has around 4.5% market share already. My apologies to Power Twitter , I originally (privately) accused them for the problems, and it looks like I was wrong. Update: I’m testing Twitter with a download of the most recent alpha build of Firefox 3.7, and it doesn’t work either. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
The Media Bundle Is Dead, Long Live The News Aggregators Top
Here we go again . The newspaper industry is blaming online news aggregators for its dwindling profits and inability to adapt to a world of links and truly-free flowing information. (They like it when information flows freely into their pages, but not so much when it flows out). On Thursday, paidContent ran an essay by media consultant Arnon Mishkin called “The Fallacy Of The Link Economy” which was misguided on so many levels . Mishkin’s main argument is that: The vast majority of the value gets captured by aggregators linking and scraping rather than by the news organizations that get linked and scraped. It is not really clear whom he is calling an aggregator—actual news aggregators like Yahoo News, Google News, Digg, Techmeme and the Huffington Post, or anyone who links to a news story. After all, he equates the entire web to the blogosphere, which says more about his parochial industry view than about the web. In his mind, the web is the enemy and links are bad. What really seems to concern him, however, are news aggregation sites. They threaten newspapers because they are emerging as the new front page which people skim every morning for headlines instead of going to any single newspaper site. Mishkin argues: Historically, the value of those casual browsers was captured by the newspaper because the readers would have to buy a copy. Now all the value gets captured by the aggregator that scrapes the copy and creates a front page that a set of readers choose to scan. Set aside for a second that ads on news aggregation sites are usually worth a lot less than ads on original content sites and thus they are not capturing the same value. More to the point, when I first read this my immediate response was that the value of news sites does not come from getting people to skim headlines, but to actually click through and read the actual stories. The newspaper industry wants to go back to the world before the Web, when each newspaper was a small media bundle packed with stories, 80 percent of which sucked. But it didn’t matter because you’d gladly pay a dollar to read the one or two stories that caught your eye on the front page, hoping there would be more inside. Well, guess what? The media bundle is dead. News sites can no longer capture reader’s attention with 20 percent news, and 80 percent suck . Each story stands on its own in a world of atomized content where readers can come from anywhere on the Web, not just the front page. Now in addition to the front page, there are a million side doors. Reader lock-in is gone. The sooner newspapers get used to that concept, the sooner they can start to adapt and survive. Which brings us back to the value of news aggregators. The newspaper industry is looking for someone to blame. Usually, it’s Google , but really anyone on the Web will do. Rather than blame the aggregators, news site should take advantage of them. On the Web, every side door can be a front page, whether it is Google News or search or Digg or Twitter or a feed reader or My Yahoo. I’ve said this before about Google, but it applies to any site that links to the news: Google does not control the news, it exposes it. . . . It is incumbent upon each of us to attract an audience by having something original or interesting to say. And if a news site or a blog can say enough interesting things enough times that news aggregators (or other sites) keep linking to them, then they can build up their brand and reader loyalty. Maybe readers will click on those links if they see it is coming from a trusted source, and then maybe some of those will start coming to the news site itself on a regular basis. But that loyalty must be earned every day, story by story, post by post. The more front pages (or side pages) which point to a news site’s stories, the more chances it has to gain that loyalty. But the days of the media bundle when readers got all of the day’s news from one site are long gone. So too are gone the cushy days when newspapers could count “casual browsers” as real readers and sell them to advertisers. Newspapers had better get used to a world where links exist and can whisk readers away as quickly as they bring them. Those who don’t will learn that trying to recreate the past is a sure a path to an early grave. (Flickr Photo: John Vachon /Library of Congress) Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Our Mac Chromium Updater: Stay Up To Date On The Best Versions Of Chrome For Mac Top
We’ve been gushing for weeks now about the latest Chromium builds for Mac. Every day, they seem to get better. The problem is that every day, several updates are released and you have to manually go to the site and scroll down a long list to find the newest version to download. So we’ve made an application that allows you to easily ensure that you have the latest version at all times. Our Mac Chromium Updater was built with the help of Greg Rosen , who created a script to check your version of Chromium versus the latest build. Then one of our developers, Hunter , created an Automator process so you don’t have to deal with installing something like Wget on your machine. The end result is a simple app that you run and let it update Chromium for you. You can find it here . For those who aren’t aware, Chromium is the open source project behind Google’s web browser, Chrome. While there are pre-release versions of regular Chrome available for Mac as well, the Chromium builds get updated much more frequently, and as such, are the closest to a working version of Chrome on the Mac. For example, latest versions of Chromium include Flash support and bookmark support . Overall, the project is coming along very nicely. A couple quick notes about our app: First, when you run the app, depending on the speed of your connection, it may take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes to download the newest build of Chromium. So even if you don’t think the app is doing anything, let it run, and eventually you will see the latest build of Chromium open on your screen. Second, this has only been tested of OS X 10.5 Leopard, but Chromium will only run on Leopard, so there you go. Enjoy. We’ve included a read me file in the zip with a few more obvious disclaimers and a note of who to email with problems. Again, find it here . Bookmark this post, we’ll add a note here if we update the updater. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Facebook 3.0 For iPhone Submitted. Now Let's Count The Days Until It's Available Top
Facebook has submitted v. 3.0 of their iPhone application to Apple, Joe Hewitt says via Twitter: “Just uploaded Facebook for iPhone 3.0 to the App Store for review. :)” Hewitt also says he’ll post screen shots and more detais on this Facebook page for the iPhone app next week, and that he’s looking forward to getting started on v. 3.1 tomorrow. We’ve been tracking 3.0 since details first became available in July. A list of some of the much needed improvements is here . And as a bonus, Hewitt said he’d be able to include video uploads to Facebook from iPhone 3Gs phones as well. And from our most recent post (yes, Hewitt has been teasing this out for weeks): That means that shortly, we'll have access to the much-improved app which is scheduled to have features such as a News Feed that is more like the one on Facebook's site, the ability to "like" items and a new customizable home screen. More importantly, it will also have video support for the iPhone 3GS, something which Hewitt threw-in at the last second, unexpectedly. And perhaps best of all, the app will have the ability to manage events, finally. It’s likely Apple will approve this app in short order. Not only are they trying to avoid high profile app problems, there’s also not very much in the Facebook app that they or AT&T would take exception to. If you haven’t heard it, make sure to listen to our interview with Joe Hewitt two years ago when Facebook first launched a special browser-based version of Facebook for the iPhone. Thanks for the tip, Matthew . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
The 35 Best iPhone Apps Of The Year (So Far) Top
This guest post was written by Alex Ahlund , founder of AppVee . We are just past of a year since the App Store launched and there are more than 60,000 applications released for the iPhone and iPod Touch. When we wrote our 2008 year-end app wrap-up , we had just surpassed the 10,000 app milestone. In early June 2009, the store reached 50,000 apps . At present, we are looking at a staggering 300 new applications being released every single day. How does the average iPhone user find the gems in this deluge? Unfortunately, the process is entirely overwhelming for the average iPhone user. The bulk of consumers use iTunes' Top and front page listings. Since placement on the top lists is derived entirely from unit sales, there is a disturbing skew towards the $.99 applications. This not only discourages big developers from putting high budgets and serious resources towards development of really useful applications and games, but also does a disservice to us, as iPhone users. If all we see are ninety-nine cent gimmicks and toys, how will we realize the true potential of our device? Apple attempts to offset this with editor's picks, but this simply isn't enough to make sense of the App Store. There are new third party services and tools coming onto the scene to help show how to best navigate the App Store. AppVee has been doing in-depth reviews of applications since the launch of the App Store and will soon celebrate our one-year anniversary with nearly 1,000 video reviews of the top applications. We're often asked if we are overwhelmed with the number of applications currently released and the number we are capable of covering. The answer is no. 90% of apps currently out there are of no use to anyone. There are a massive number of clones, one-off gimmicks, volumes of books and reference material, and a never-ending supply of uninteresting games. So, we try to act as a filter for consumers, directing them to what is worth their time and money. The following is a round-up of our top picks so far this year: Most practical 1. Slacker Radio A fantastic alternative to Pandora, which carries a larger catalog and offers Premium accounts that offers something we've always loathed about Pandora – unlimited song skips. (Similar: Pandora , WunderRadio , Last.fm ) 2. Hey Where Are You A beautifully simple application that takes advantage of Push Notification, by letting users ask and answer the question "Hey, Where Are You?" (Similar: Loopt ) 3. Textfree Unlimited Currently the best alternative to high SMS plan costs, offering free text messaging using Push Notification. 4. Bento Create simple databases to store information about every aspect of your life. 5. TweetDeck Our new, favorite Twitter client that takes advantage of the same layout as its desktop counterpart – multiple columns, separation of user groups, and more. (Similar: Tweetie, Twinkle, TwitterFON) 6. Print and Share Print files, emails, web pages, contacts, images and even snapshots direct from your camera, straight to your home printer. Simple setup and works perfectly. 7. Flight Tracker Watch flights in real-time and get up-to-the-minute arrival and departure times. This has saved me countless delayed pick-ups from the airport. 8. Read It Later Store any web page for offline reading or to mark as a reminder to read. A bit tricky to setup at first, but it will quickly replace bookmarking for articles. 9. iEmoji Activate emoticons in your keyboard to include in emails and text messages. Works only for iPhones, but the end reader does not need the app to see emoticons in your texts. 10. Birthday Reminder Rarely check Facebook to see upcoming birthdays? This app downloads all of that information so you can access and easily see upcoming bdays offline. 11. Mover Swap contacts and photos with other iPhones in an easy way. Requires both users to have the application, but it is free and quick to download. (Similar: Bump) 12. Simplify Music 2 Listen to your entire music library from your home computer, streamed quickly and without any lag. (Similar: Simply Music, imeem) 13. Cell Minute Tracker We prefer Cell Minute Tracker to AT&T's minute tracker any day. Much simpler, easy to navigate and much faster. 14. QuickOffice Edit Word and Excel documents on the go. 15. Photogene There are a multitude of photo editing apps out there, but you really only need one. Crop, rotate, adjust colors, and add filters with Photogene. (Similar: Camera Bag) 16. Skype Superb quality Skype-to-Skype over WiFi using the Skype application. Finally be free of your computer and microphone to make those long distance calls. (Similar: Truphone) 17. Kindle Skeptical at first, but found eBook reader surprisingly easy on the eyes and good for taking in a quick chapter. Offers plenty of free content, but won't be replacing your physical Kindle. 18. Beejive IM 3.0 We mentioned this on last year's roundup, but it deems reiteration. So far, the best multi-IM service client on the iPhone, now with Push Notification. AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, and more. 19. Redlaser Extremely reluctant to include this on the list, but it does deserve a bottom slot. Scan UPC codes for price comparisons on the go, but wait for an update for improved scanning and database. Best Games 20. Real Racing Standard track based racing game, but has the best graphics on an iPhone game to-date. Worth it alone to see what the iPhone is capable of. 21. Sims 3 Slightly watered down Sims 3, but still an excellent version on the go. Fantastic graphics and runs well. 22. My Brute Create a fighter and compete in daily arena matches. Very simplistic, but highly addicting and will bring you back daily. 23. Mecho Wars Advanced Wars for your iPhone and iPod Touch, enough said. Interesting art style and background story. 24. Zenonia The first fully featured traditional 2D action RPG for your iPhone and iPod Touch. 25. Peggle The time sucking, simple Pachinko style casual PC game from PopCap ported to your device. 26. Marble Blast Mobile Another PC game port where you roll your marble through various levels, filled with obstacles and hazards. http://www.appvee.com/t/iphone-app-review-marble-blast-mobile 27. Myst Do we even need to explain this one? 28. Merlin's Legacy An original IP based around two dueling wizards, battling for control across a 2D side-scrolling field. Interesting game mechanic based on spells and timing. 29. Assassin's Creed A smaller version of Assassin's Creed on your iPhone and iPod Touch. Plays rather smoothly and provides solid entertainment. 30. Oregon Trail The classic Oregon Trail, updated with fantastic graphics and animation. Will keep you entertained just like when you were in school. Try not to die of dysentery. 31. Rolando 2 The sequel to the popular game of rolling little Rolandos around to save the kingdom. Your hands may cramp from hours of play. Fun Timewasters 32. Doodle Jump Dominated the Top 25 list for quite a while. Accelerometer based movement—you guide your Doodle to bounce off platforms, jumping to the highest point possible as you avoid getting hit. 33. Mouth Off Cover your mouth with your device and show off an assortment of crazy mouths that animate to the input sound of your voice. I've annoyed dining mates with this one more than once. 34. Pocket God Well done, episodic content based on a simple toy of dealing with your islanders. Fun to show off to friends and receive new updates. 35. Flight Control Elegantly simple and highly addictive game. You direct various planes to different landing strips, all the while trying to avoid collisions. Updated with Bluetooth device co-op. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
NSFW: Two magicians, three cups and one lesson your boring product must learn from Penn and Teller Top
“Are Penn and Teller really launching a product at TechCrunch 50?” As I typed the message to Arrington, I could barely contain my glee. For a few strange years, starting towards the end of my teens, I worked as a magician - making good money and impressing girls by turning card tricks at corporate dinners and in fancy restaurants. It’s a long story, but one strangely common among people who ended up working on or around the web. For some reason a youthful interest in magic often comes hand-in-hand with a career in technology. It’s probably something to do with being a geek. Arrington’s reply was both a confirmation and a warning: “ Yes they are . And if you write anything that stops them coming, you’re fired.” So, it’s official: Penn and Teller - the magicians’ magicians - are coming to TechCrunch 50 next month. Your response to this news will probably depend on which part of the technology barrel you inhabit. For those scraping along at the bottom - the self-described ’social media consultants’, the me-too-rip-off app builders, the spammers, the search engine optimisation goons, the MySpace child groomers - it might be one of confusion. I mean, what could a couple of Las Vegas magicians possibly know about launching a technology product? But for anyone else: anyone who understands that technology can actually be an art form rather than just a way to fleece gullible punters, the pairing of tech and magic makes perfect sense. I mean, Penn and Teller at TechCrunch 50 is basically the physical manifestation of Arthur C Clarke’s third law : “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Clarke’s law, of course, was little more than a useful crutch; a maxim that - by his own admission - he bolted on to his previous two ( “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right.” / “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible” ) because he decided three was a better number. Also, by likening the kind of super-advanced technologies he wrote about to ‘real’ magic Clarke could avoid Jules Verne’s problem of having to explain how his wonderful inventions worked, only for actual innovation to prove him wrong a few years later. Clarke’s point was that contemporary readers couldn’t possibly understand how his future technologies worked, they just did. Like magic. No further explanation required. But in fact Clarke’s basic premise - that, at a certain level, the line between magic and technology becomes invisible - is absolutely right, just maybe for different reasons than he described. Speak to any decent magician - one who has read his Professor Hoffman or at least his Mark Wilson - and he will tell you about the time he saw a trick (or ‘effect’) that absolutely blew his mind, despite knowing every one of the technical principles behind it. The one that stands out for me was the time - I was maybe 14 years old - that I watched an American magician called David Williamson instantly restore a piece of rope that he had previously cut in half, using his fingers as a pair of scissors. The cut and restored rope is an ancient classic of magic, and there’s really only one way to do it. And yet the way Williamson employed that method was so good - so mind-blowingly, knee-shakingly good - that it (literally) made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. And so it should be with technology. I remember - just as vividly as I remember David Williamson’s rope trick - the first time I bought a laptop with WiFi. For ten minutes or more I carried that laptop around my house, up and down stairs; into different rooms; even into my back yard, streaming full-screen video from the BBC website as I went. Again, I knew exactly what was going on: there was the WiFi card jutting from the PCMCIA port and I’d just spent ten minutes configuring the wireless hub. And yet… the experience of watching full-screen video on my laptop, without wires, was as near to pure magic as watching that piece of rope mend itself two feet from my eyes. The comparisons between really good uses of the principles of magic and really good uses of technology are so numerous that they could fill a book. In the 1930’s, Charles Hoffman caused a sensation with a small brass tea-kettle that could - on command - pour any drink or cocktail that the audience requested. Today my iPhone, with its 3G connection and iTunes, can do the same for any piece of music ever recorded. Which one is more magical to watch, really? Or consider Criss Angel who, using some invisible - but quite basic - method is able to tell a woman on Las Vegas Boulevard the precise date she was born, or what she does for a living. With Google I can summon any fact ever recorded, from wherever I happen to be in the world. Again, which is more impressive? Certainly neither is made less magical by knowing, broadly, how it works. The brilliance lies in how well the method is hidden, and how powerful the effect is. And so it is with every single brilliant piece of technology, or web app that has ever been created. From the cellphone, to the iPod; from webcams to the web to WiFi. From email to eBay to Twitter to Hotmail to Shazzam to GPS to Google Maps to the Kindle. Pick your favourite, and remember how you felt when you first used it. Now remember the best magic trick you ever saw. The feeling is exactly the same. Like all good rules, this one works the other way around as well. Remember the exact opposite of the best magic trick you ever saw. Your boring uncle’s card trick - the one where, through the most convoluted of methods, probably involving dividing the pack into piles and counting slowly through them - he triumphantly, and boringly, turned over the card you chose. Remember how he made you feel: you probably didn’t know what bizzare mathematics or slight of hand genius lead him to your card, but neither did you care. If he were a real magician, he’d have found the card straight away. The only person he impressed was himself. The same is true of the worst technology. I don’t care how technically sophisticated Wolfram Alpha is, or how many genius hours it took to build it - all I know is that it forced me to think too hard, and returned results that were of no use to man nor beast. The technological equivalent of a boring uncle; the method was more impressive than the effect, and so the hairs on the back of my neck remain unstood. Which brings me to Penn and Teller. Of all of the magicians working today, none more perfectly illustrates the rule that a magical effect must take precedence over technical brilliance. Their stage show is a spectacular of blood and gore and guns and showgirls and pyrotechnics - and yet for their signature piece, they clear all of that aside and perform the oldest and most widely-known effect in magic: the cups and balls. You’ve seen it before, of course. Three cups, three little balls. One by one the balls vanish and, one by one, they reappear under the cups. Then, by way of a kicker, the cups are lifted to reveal three limes, one under each. But there’s more! The cups are stacked and lifted one last time to reveal - a huge lemon. Four large pieces of fruit from under three cups: cue the applause. But while every magician since the ancient Egyptians has finished there, Penn and Teller announce that they are going to do the trick one more time: this time using transparent cups. It’s amazing to watch: every single load, every single sleight and steal is laid bare. You see the moment they put the limes under the cups. You even see the lemon go in. But such is the brilliance of their execution, that you’re still left both baffled and blown away. The method becomes irrelevant, the effect is everything. The audience is on their feet. And it’s for that reason that I’m so delighted that Penn and Teller will be at Techcrunch 50. Not for what they’re launching - although from what I’ve heard, it’s going be pretty damn cool - but rather for what their appearance will hopefully remind anyone getting ready to launch a product, either at the event or at any time in the future… It doesn’t matter how clever your technology - if the effect doesn’t make the hairs on the back of your audience’s neck stand up, you need to keep working until it does. But if you do manage to build something even half as impressive as that lemon appearing under that plastic cup, then fame, fortune and a well-deserved standing ovation will be yours for the taking. CrunchBase Information Penn Jillette Information provided by CrunchBase CrunchBase Information Raymond Teller Information provided by CrunchBase CrunchBase Information Paul Carr Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Saturday Apple Rumors, Served Up Fresh Top
Good afternoon and welcome to Chez Apple Rumors. Your first lunch course will be an iPod Touch with a camera followed by the accidental insertion of something called the IPAD into a survey for Borders Books. Can I get anyone anything to drink? So we begin this Eng video of the iPod Touch with camera that we talked about this week. It’s apparently a prototype model that was ground to bits by Apple’s stress testers and then recycled. As you see from the video after the jump, the old fellow has a camera. Then, as you see from the above screenshot, we learn that Borders is talking up something called the iPad , a noble and befitting name for a device that is a Pad and is made by Apple. I did a trademark search and came up with bupkus, but that doesn’t mean they won’t assign it by January. The Borders survey asks if you’re planning to buy an Apple IPAD (Large Screen Reading Device),” which either suggest someone at Borders is taking the piss or they have horrible web designers never talk to legal. This is all well and good but of what are we certain? We know that upcoming iPods will have cameras come September 8 or so and that the iPad or whatever it will be called will drop in 2010. All the rest of these rumors and videos are just icing on the already delicious Apple future device cake. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Coincidence? Three Interesting Things About 345 Spear Street, San Francisco Top
It’s the location of Google’s San Francisco office (floors 2-4) It’s the location of the Secret Service’s San Francisco field office (floors 5-6) And someone who works there has a license plate that says “Drunk” Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to theorize how these three facts form the backbone of a massive worldwide conspiracy. Feel free to add additional “facts,” such as “That building was also constructed on top of an ancient Native American burial ground” or “I heard that’s where the Secret Service keeps all the counterfeit cash they confiscate, and the floors are really thin.” Just make sure to bake in the drunk license plate, too. I took that picture of the license plate, by the way, in the parking garage of that building. And a different picture of it ended up on the FailBlog last month . So if you can work that into your conspiracy theory, you get bonus points. Best story gets a free TechCrunch Tshirt , any size, delivered anywhere in the world. In fact, any entertaining story that has significant creative effort put into it gets a Tshirt. So go for it. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Phil Schiller Is A Man On A Mission: To Save The App Store Top
As Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing, you’d have to imagine that Phil Schiller is a pretty busy guy. He’s also been moonlighting as Apple’s keynote speaker during Steve Jobs’ medical leave of absence. But now it’s really starting to look as if Schiller has taken on another task: App Store savior. We’ve already talked at length about the two instances in the past week or so of Schiller personally reaching out to bloggers to set the record straight about a few of the App Store issues . But he has actually taken it a step farther. He’s also been reaching out to individual app makers to talk to them about their apps and offer his assistance in getting them approved, we’ve learned tonight. And one such app, Rising Card, is now available in the App Store thanks to Schiller. Rising Card is a magic application developed by Theory11 . The reason it was initially rejected after a long period of hearing nothing from Apple was that they felt the app would be confusing to customers. Of course, that was the point of the app as it’s a magic trick meant to confuse people. The developers wrote Apple to explain that to them, but heard nothing back. They figured all hope was lost as this was hardly a high profile application, and Apple clearly didn’t seem to care too much about it. Then the magic blog iTricks picked up the story which led the Apple blog TUAW to cover the rejection a few days ago, and all of a sudden, Apple started reaching out to the developers. And of course, not just anyone at Apple, but Schiller and also Phil Shoemaker, Apple’s Director of Application Technology. Based on this and Schiller’s previous responses, it would seem that not only is Apple reading the blogs that cover App Store issues, but it really is trying to resolve them. And in this case it did. Shoemaker called yesterday to let the developers know that the app was now in the store. Obviously, the developers are very pleased with situation. Jonathan Bayme, the CEO of Theory11 wrote this to us this evening: Schiller was unbelievably responsive throughout the whole ordeal. Our first communication from him was late at night on the 11th - with another email sent to us an hour later. He was extremely nice and although not promising anything, he said he would have their team look into the situation ASAP. To be frank, Chris and I [the creators] were both amazed that this had reached the heights it had at all - given the fact that it is just a fun magic trick. We had spent months creating, polishing, and finishing this thing - and up until then we thought all hope was lost. It’s been quite the rollercoaster. This morning, we received another email from Schiller advising us that Phil Shoemaker (Director of Application Technology) would be in touch with us soon to discuss our app, and as promised I received a phone call about three hours later from Phil. Shoemaker said that his team was looking into the issue as we spoke, and he was hopeful to see resolution of this by the end of the day. True to his word - it was in fact approved late this afternoon. In sincerity the whole process was quite the ordeal, but I must say that I respect the hell out of the fact that we received the personal attention that we did. They were responsive, attentive, and truly listened to what we were saying. While one could argue that it took us over a month to get to that point, I would judge this situation based on the lengths they went to to fix the problem - they were incredible. So there you go, another happy customer. This new Schiller strategy seems to be working wonders for the App Store. But I still find it a little crazy that it’s Schiller who is personally doing this. On one hand it’s great, but it’s also odd. Perhaps that speaks to this being more serious of a situation then just some apps being rejected. After all, the FCC is looking into Apple’s role in the App Store and how it handles app approvals/rejections. This follows Apple’s rejection of the Google Voice app and the removal of all apps that use Google Voice. Google and AT&T are also the subjects of that investigation. When the government gets involved — the government that is already looking into Apple for its board of director issues (with Google), anti-competitive issues (with iTunes/iPod), and hiring practice issues (again, with Google) — you are naturally going to take things a little more seriously than you were before. The fact of the matter is that Apple had, and still has , a lot of problems with the App Store. They waited too long to fix them, and the situation started to get out of control. So it looks like Apple may have had to bring out the big guns to restore order. Now, Schiller and Shoemaker cannot possibly personally look into every app, or even just every app rejection, but they appear to be focusing on the ones that are getting attention. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was some kind of stop-gap move until the improvements to the App Store approval process that Schiller has been alluding to are ready to go. We know they’ve already broken up the iPhone PR team into two divisions now (hardware and App Store), a next step could well be a complete revamping of the app approval process and team. When MobileMe was having troubles following its launch last year, Steve Jobs stepped in to right the ship, and it worked. It looks like Schiller may be doing the same now with the App Store. Let’s hope that works too. Oh, and the Rising Card application that led to all of this? It’s pretty good, very smartly designed. Is there any reason Apple should have rejected it? No, and so it’s good to see it in the App Store where it belongs. Find it here for $2.99. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Gmail Nudges Past AOL Email In The U.S. To Take No. 3 Spot. Top
Good thing Gmail is out of beta. It is now the third largest Web mail service in the U.S. In July, Gmail nudged past AOL Email with 37 million unique visitors compared to 36.4 million for AOL, according to comScore estimates. (Gmail is the orange line in the chart below). That puts Gmail within sight of the No. 2 player, Windows Live Hotmail, which has 47 million unique visitors. After that there is a wide gulf separating Yahoo Mail and its 106 million monthly unique visitors. The last time checked on Gmail’s progress was at the beginning of the year, when it seemed like it would still take at least two years for it to catch up to its nearest rivals. But so far this year, Gmail’s unique visitors grew 25 percent, while AOL’s declined 22 percent. Thus, the two crossed paths in July. (Hotmail grew only 8 percent during the same period, while Yahoo Mail increased unique visitors by a healthy 16 percent). If Google wants Gmail to pass Hotmail quickly and gain the No. 2 spot, my suggestion is to keep pumping in new enhancements through Gmail Labs and to speed up the pace at which mail storage increases. Not that I am a typical user, but I am already at 97 percent of my allotted 7,358 megabytes. One of the primary lures of Gmail has always been its seemingly endless and ever-expanding storage limits. Please don’t make me pay for more storage. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
 
CubeTree Adds Group Chat To Its Branches Top
CubeTree , the collaboration suite built on an enterprise social networking platform, has launched a new group chat feature today that should allow its customers to communicate more efficiently with chat room functionality. CEO and Co-Founder Carlin Wiegner says that there are also more APIs coming to CubeTree, including some that are related to the new live chat feature. CubeTree also has applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, Blackberry, Adobe AIR and Jabber support. Group chats can be enabled so numerous users can communicate with each other at once. After chats are completed, they are archived for later viewing, which you can also search through by keyword. Just earlier this week, Socialcast launched its own brand new set of developer API’s to help Socialcast users better communicate with each other. CubeTree was founded in 2008 and is backed by Mitch Kapor and Trinity Ventures . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 
Tapulous's Cash Cow Tap Tap Revenge 3 Is Almost Here Top
It’s been a long time coming, but it’s almost here: Tapulous is putting the finishing touches on Tap Tap Revenge 3, the next installment of its wildly sucessful iPhone music game. The game, which is best described as a “Guitar Hero for the iPhone”, will feature in-game song purchases, which were finally enabled with the release of the iPhone 3.0 software update in June. If there’s a game ripe to make a killing with these in-game downloads, it’s TTR. Tapulous expects to have the game submitted by the end of August, with general release soon thereafter depending on the App Store’s approval process. So why does this matter? Tap Tap Revenge and its various spinoffs has been some of the iPhone’s most popular games since the App Store launched last year (in fact, a very similar game was very popular on jailbroken phones before the official store even launched). Gameplay consists of tapping your fingers to a song as colorful bubbles fall down the screen, and newer versions also make use of the phone’s accelerometer so you can shake it to the beat. As with games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, TTR tends to appeal to a very broad audience. But until now it’s been handicapped by one major obstacle: there was no way for users to pay to download new songs. On console games like Rock Band, in-game purchases have proven very lucrative with gamers regularly plopping down around $2 per song. But the iPhone didn’t allow for this kind of transaction until recently, so Tapulous was forced to sell satellite games like TTR Weezer and TTR Coldplay , which did well but never saw nearly the usage of the main TTR app. Now they’ll be able to license songs from directly inside the flagship app, which means the number of paid downloads will likely skyrocket. It will also likely be easier to get premium artists on the platform, as they will be able to sell a song or two at a time rather than entire albums. As a teaser, Tapulous has sent us the following frustratingly small screenshot: Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 

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