Wednesday, August 26, 2009

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TechCrunch50: Don Dodge, Paul Graham, Jason Hirschhorn and Mike Schroepfer join Panel of Experts Top
We’re pleased to announce Don Dodge (Microsoft's Emerging Business Team), Paul Graham (Cofounder of Y Combinator), Jason Hirschhorn (MySpace Chief Product Officer), and Mike Schroepfer (Facebook VP Engineering) will be joining our on-stage panel of experts at TechCrunch50 . They’ll judge the fifty launching startups in front of a crowd of 2,000 or so eager attendees. They’ll join the already announced expert lineup of Marc Andreessen, Roelof Botha, Ron Conway, Reid Hoffman, Tony Hsieh, Marissa Mayer, Tim O'Reilly, Sean Parker, Kevin Rose, Robert Scoble, and Yossi Vardi. This will be Don’s third year judging. Paul, Jason, and Mike will be making their first appearances. And we’re not stopping here - additional judges will be announced next week. All the details for the conference are here . TechCrunch50 is an action-packed conference where fifty new startups launch over two days. The event will be held at the San Francisco Design Center, a huge and beautiful venue where we packed nearly 2,000 participants last year. Tickets for the event can be purchased here courtesy of Eventbrite. We've slashed our early-bird prices from 2008 to $1995 through August 31. (Prices escalate to $2,995.) If you’re interested in demoing your product, we have a few spots left in our DemoPit ( e-mail us for details). Additionally, exhibitor passes are available for $8,000, which include entry to the conference for 4 people, a 5' exhibitor table, and other goodies . More on the TechCrunch50 blog . Don Dodge Don Dodge is a veteran of five start-ups including Forte Software, AltaVista, Napster, Bowstreet, and Groove Networks. Don is currently Director of Business Development for Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team . Don has been in the software business for more than 20 years. He started his software career with Digital Equipment, aka DEC, in the database group. He worked with 5 software start-ups over the next 12 years. Forte Software was the first multiplatform object oriented development environment. AltaVista was the first search engine on the web. Napster was the first P2P file sharing network. Bowstreet was the first web services development environment. Groove Networks was the first secure P2P collaboration platform. Now he is at Microsoft… “the biggest start-up in the world”… working with VC’s and start-ups in the greater Boston area. Paul Graham Paul Graham is an essayist, programmer, and programming language designer. In 1995 he developed with Robert Morris the first web-based application, Viaweb, which was acquired by Yahoo in 1998. In 2002 he described a simple statistical spam filter that inspired a new generation of filters. He’s currently working on a new programming language called Arc , a new book on startups, and is one of the partners in Y Combinator . Paul is the author of On Lisp (Prentice Hall, 1993), ANSI Common Lisp (Prentice Hall, 1995), and Hackers & Painters (O’Reilly, 2004). He has an AB from Cornell and a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard, and studied painting at RISD and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence. Jason Hirschhorn Jason Hirschhorn is Chief Product Officer for MySpace . As one of the company's foremost senior leaders, Jason is dedicated to transforming the MySpace brand and product by providing an unparalleled user-experience. His unique approach emphasizes innovation, rejects the notion of the media company as tastemaker, and lets the audience guide the direction of product and content offerings. Mike Schroepfer Mike Schroepfer is the Vice President of Engineering at Facebook . Mike is responsible for harnessing the engineering organization's culture of speed, creativity and exploration to build products, services and infrastructure that support the company's users, developers and partners around the world. Before coming to Facebook, Mike was the Vice President of Engineering at Mozilla Corporation, where he led the global, collaborative, open and participatory product development process behind Mozilla’s popular software, such as the Firefox web browser. Mike was formerly a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems where he was the Chief Technology Officer for the data center automation division (”N1″). He was also the founder, Chief Architect and Director of Engineering at CenterRun, which was acquired by Sun. Mike worked with several startups at the outset of his career, including a digital effects software startup where he built software that has been used in several major motion pictures. Mike holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degrees in computer science from Stanford University and has filed two U.S. patents. Great partners make great conferences We’re really lucky to have the corporate support of some of the best names in the business. Sequoia Capital , Charles River Ventures and Perkins Coie all returned quickly to support us for the third year in a row. Google , Founders Fund , Microsoft and MySpace are back for their second year of partnership, and this year Bing stepped forward as a first-time partner. Additional partners will be named in the next few weeks. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
The Governator Live From Twitter HQ Today. Has His Twitter Service Already Gone To Pot? Top
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is heading to Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco today to do a live streaming webchat with co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone . Oddly, Twitter hasn’t posted about it on its blog , but much of the company is atwitter (see what I did there) over the arrival . And so is the Governor, who tweets , “ If you want to send in questions for my webchat at twitter hq with @ev and @biz, now is the time. You snooze, you lose. ” So what’s the purpose behind the Governor’s visit and the webcast? Well, Schwarzenegger has just launched a new Twitter-based site for California, MyIdea4CA.com . Yes, he’s using the social network to crowd-source ideas for how to run the state. Here’s the way the site describes how the process works: Ideas are submitted to the website through your Twitter account when you include the hashtag #myidea4ca along with your idea in your tweet. MyIdea4CA.com centralizes the Twitter conversation by indexing the #myidea4ca tweets so they can be searched, sorted, and ranked and extends the conversation by allowing users to vote and add comments. So basically, it’s Digg meets Twitter — to help run the state of California. But has the idea already gone to pot? Right now, the top three vote-getters by far on MyIdea4CA are all about legalizing marijuana in some way. All of the other most popular suggestions are about overhauling the education system. I’m not sure which seems less likely to happen. I’m also not sure where the Governor’s live stream will be held, so I’ll update when I find out [Update below]. He should be at Twitter HQ any minute now judging from the tweets. Update : It’s worth noting that when then President-Elect Obama, launched a similar “Idea Generator” with Salesforce.com, the top vote-getter was also to legalize pot. Update 2 : Schwarzenegger has tweeted out that the conversation is now going on live right here . [image: Tri-Star Pictures] CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
RightsFlow Scores $1.5 Million, Will Launch Consumer Facing Site To Obtain Music Rights Top
RightsFlow, a startup that manages music licensing and payment services, has raised $1.5 million in Series A funding from Originate Ventures. Launched in 2007, RightsFlow helps online music services, record companies, distributors and artists license music and lyrics while also managing payments for the rights-holders. RightsFlow says that the funding will be used to develop new products and services, one of which will be launched this fall. Currently named “Clearance Form” (I’m told this name is temporary), the product will be a consumer-facing site that will help coordinate payments between the licensee and licensor. So if a cover band or artist wanted to obtain the licensing rights to a particular song, they could go to the site to find and pay for the proper license. RightsFlow’s co-founder Patrick Sullivan told me that the site will be “cost-friendly” and meant for the masses but didn’t shed any light on the pricing model. Music licensing has been a controversial topic recently, with the National Music Publishers Association filing copyright infringement lawsuits against two companies, LiveUniverse and Motive Force, for operating Web sites and applications that offer users free lyrics. Sullivan says that RightsFlow aims to mitigate this problem by providing any artist or band with a cost-effective way to license songs. And RightsFlow will handle payments within the site, acting like an Amazon for music rights. Competitors to RightsFlow include Royalty Share and Music Reports Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
What Is Going On In Facebook's "Outside World"? Top
When we wrote about Facebook ’s minor design changes earlier today, we didn’t take an extremely close look at the screenshots that were embedded in the accompanying blog post the company’s design team published about the tweaks. If we had, we may or may not have noticed that they featured two nuggets that most definitely deserve a second glance, but FBhive most certainly took notice. What did they see? Well for starters, Facebook Product Designer Alexandre Roche's profile appears to have an extra filter for his news feed, labeled ‘Outside World’ and accompanied by an icon that represents a laboratory beaker (likely because it concerns an experimental feature). Additionally, FBhive has spotted what appears to be a new ‘plus’ icon and number next to the Comment and Like numbers for a Video in the Highlights section of Roche’s profile page. This calls for speculation! FBhive - assuming it’s not a third-party application - believes ‘Outside World’ is a filter that would display content from other websites and applications you’ve subscribed to inside Facebook. This would extend the social network into a giant web-based RSS reader that could integrate seamlessly with the sharing features offered by Facebook. Makes sense to us, and we can imagine this would make waves in Webland if true. That is, if it ever sees the light of day. The second thing FBhive spotted in my opinion is far more intriguing. As reported by the Facebook-centric blog, the (+) sign that appears next to the number of comments and likes of a highlighted video - uploaded by Facebook employee Helen Min - looks like the icon that is used for Facebook Credits (check for yourself here ). These can be used by members of the social network to purchase virtual gifts in Facebook’s Gift Shop , give credits to other users or to interact with a select number of third-party applications such as GroupCard and SocialCalendar. Unless of course it isn’t a plus sign at all and we’re looking at it the wrong way (Erick says it looks more like a diamond). Question remains then what it represents, possibly the number of shares or reposts, or a shortcut to bookmarking content? If it is in fact the Credits icon, the question is why this virtual currency could in the future possibly be assigned by users to content like videos and possibly other multimedia. FBhive thinks it could be a way for publishers, amateurs and professionals alike, to monetize material uploaded to the social networking service by directly getting tipped by viewers and fans through micro-payments. Again, this is a plausible explanation, and an exciting one to think over considering Facebook’s highly anticipated payment platform (which is currently being tested ). Care to speculate a little more? Update : Facebook got back to us. The credits are a feature Facebook has been testing since April and “Outside World” is a feature for Facebook employees which allows them to filter out the streams of other Facebook employees and see only the streams of their non-Facebook friends. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Branchr Advertising Acquires Online Collaboration Software Maker Atomplan Top
Branchr Advertising , the CPC (cost per click) based internet advertising company that allows fair ad distribution without contracts or setup fees, has acquired small business project and contact management application Atomplan (formerly Avecora OnDemand ), we’ve learned this morning. Financial details were not disclosed, but Branchr Advertising Director/Founder Christian Owens mentioned that the deal was a cash and equity acquisition. Atomplan is a small business organization and team collaboration suite, delivered on the web, on-demand. Among Atomplan features are task and deadline management, group messaging, calendar, contact management and allocation, wiki pages, and Twitter-style status updates. The service was formally run by startup Avecora , which is now moving its focus from web applications to consumer electronics, we’re told by the company’s 17-year old CEO Mark Bao . Branchr self-reports currently serving 100 million ads per month, across more than 2,300 websites. Its competitors include Fusion Ads , which claims to have served nearly 18 million ad impressions last July, and The Deck . Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 

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