Friday, September 18, 2009

Y! Alert: TechCrunch

Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from TechCrunch

New Lawsuit Brings Clarity To Skype's IP Problem (Prognosis: Screwed) Top
When a group of investors pooled their resources a few weeks ago to put a bid in to buy Skype from eBay , I thought there was a good chance that Skype’s legal woes were behind them. Apparently, I was wrong , and a new lawsuit makes it clear just how bad the situation is for Skype. Sure, Skype doesn’t own its core P2P technology, and founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom were trying to rip that IP out of the service. But that’s all old news from months ago. Surely those new investors wouldn’t have committed to paying $1.9 billion for 65% of a company that didn’t control it’s IP? At the time of the deal, people close to the transaction told me that the new investors had a much better relationship with Niklas and Janus than eBay, and the situation would soon be worked out. Our best guess was the two would be given a piece of Skype, and possibly a board seat, and the litigation would be dropped. But that isn’t the case, it seems. This new intellectual property lawsuit against former Joost CEO Mike Volpi and venture capital firm Index Ventures really has nothing to do with Joost at all. It’s all about control and ownership of Skype, and it’s a signal that the dispute is nowhere near over. What’s most interesting about the lawsuit is a single disclosure early in the lawsuit complaint. Not only does Skype not own the core P2P technology underlying the service, but they don’t even have access to the source code (emphasis added): A source code version of the GI Software is licenced by Joltid to Joost, allowing Joost to be the first company to successfully deliver television and other video content in real-time over a peer-to-peer network. An executable-only object code form of the GI Software was licensed by Loltid to Skype, a well-known Internet-based company that provides users throughout the world wiht free or low-cost telephone services over the Internet. Skype did not obtain a license to the GI Software source code , however, and the license it did obtain was terminated based on SKype’s breaches of the license agreement. And this bit of information singlehandedly explains possibly the entire history of Skype over the last few years. Want to know why they never opened up to developers in a meaninful way? It’s because they couldn’t. They can’t even tweak their own core source code to allow it. Skype has never disclosed this, but it must be a source of monumental frustration for them. That frustration boiled over in an interview I did with Skype last week , where they made it very clear that they want to, and plan to, open up widely to developers. But until this litigation is cleared up, and Skype has access to the actual source code that runs its service, that isn’t going to happen. This new litigation could tank the acquisition. Or it could change it materially. Or it could result in a big compromise where Niklas and Janus take a big role in the new Skype. But whatever happens, it has very little to do with Mike Volpi and Index Ventures. The real story here is that Skype is restrained from innovating because they don’t own their own IP. In fact, they can’t even see the core IP. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Sneak Peak At T2, Twine's Semantic Search Engine Top
Extracting meaning from the Web is huge project that is very difficult to do at large scale. Keyword search only skims the surface of meaning locked in Web pages. Various semantic search technologies try to go deeper by adding structured data to web pages so that the Web can be treated more like a database. But adding semantic metadata to the Web is laborious and time-consuming. Just look at Twine . It’s approach so far has been to add semantic data only to the Web pages members save to the service. While it appeared like Twine was finally getting some traction earlier this year, it’s fallen by the wayside. Traffic is way down (see chart below), partly because it is no longer buying traffic with ads and partly because of changes to the way Google indexes the site. Bottom line is that is that beyond a hardcore following of about 250,000, Twine does not have broad appeal. But CEO Nova Spivack and his team at Twine have been busy working on something else entirely, to the point that the current Twine service is pretty much on autopilot. In the video above, Spivack gives a sneak peak at what his team has been working on. Codenamed T2, it is complete departure from the navel-gazing approach of Twine 1.0. It is a big step towards creating a semantic search engine that might eventually scale across the Web—exactly the kind of swing for the fences type of idea we like to see at TechCrunch. When T2 launches, hopefully by the end of the year, it will be a demonstration of what semantic search could be. T2 will have a semantic index of the top 50 to 100 sites across major categories such as food, health, sports, music, finance, television, politics, tech and movies. In those categories, T2 should provide really good guided search. If you search for “baseball” you will get a list of baseball players, along with categories on the side to refine the list such as by position or team name. When you type in “thai food,” you can select the Recipes tab and then filter by food site, rating, main ingredient, and so on. Or you can select the restaurant tab and drill down by city, hours of operation, etc. You’ll find this type of guided search on Bing , with the categories changing based on the initial search term. But Twine does things differently. What Twine has done, basically, is speed up the rate at which it can look at a raw Web page and create semantic metadata for it. Bing sometimes does this via natural language processing, through the technology it bought with Powerset . That takes a lot of computation. It also employs other methods. Twine’s approach is more to create a set of semantic tags for each page. There are already standards for doing this, such as RDF and OWL, but most Webmasters don’t bother adding such tags to their sites. If they happen to be there, Twine can read them, but it can also make a good guess as to what is on the page and assign its own tags to the page. In order to try to make it easier for Web developers to tag their sites, Twine is also working on developer tools such as an Ontologies Editor. This lets anyone with domain expertise define the different concepts and tags which would characterize a page about a particular topic, such as a recipe or a baseball player or a car. For example, a recipe might be contain concepts such as ingredients, difficulty level, an author, and a a date. There are literally millions of potential properties that can be matched to different concepts. The collection of all of these together for a specific topic is an ontology. There can literally be hundreds of thousands of ontologies for every conceivable topic. If Twine knows what ontology to apply to a given Web page, it can do a better job applying semantic tags to it and extracting data. Twine wants to create an open directory of these things, which will be like a SourceForge for ontologies where anyone can contribute and make them better. You can watch this video for more details. All of this might seem a bit abstract, but if we could ever get to the point where the most important pages on the Web have semantic tags, it will be a lot easier for computers to know what they are about. And to the extent that data is locked in those pages, the Semantic Web will turn that data into something that can be computed. As these tags get applied to more and more information, they could eventually help filter stream data as well that everyone is increasingly drowning in. Whether or not Twine will be the company to deliver any or all of this is a long shot, but it is definitely something worth swinging for. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Closing In On Launch, Twitter Tweaks Its Retweet API And Shares A Picture Top
In the Twitter API Announcement Google Group today, developer Marcel Molina posted a couple interesting updates about the upcoming Retweet API . First, the launch of the new API is “close at hand.” In fact, Molina notes that users may already be seeing the new style retweet/status messages from users who are currently testing out the feature. Second, and more importantly, Twitter is making a pretty significant change to the API prior to launch. Previously, Twitter was requiring third party developers to check whether a tweet has already come in or not in any users’ stream to see if they should collapse it under the new retweet structure. Now, Twitter has built its own mechanism to check for those duplicate tweets into the API. This will ensure that only the first tweet is shown and the retweets go under it automatically. Interestingly enough, Molina notes that this will only gather up to 100 retweets. With our TechCrunch account, we often see many more than that, so it will be interesting to see how it handles that. As I read it, it may just cut off the retweets beyond 100, and simply not show them, which seems fine. Oddly though, in the image below, you’ll notice a “100+” note on Sarah Silverman’s tweet. Perhaps it notes that many, but will not show them. Molina apologized to developers if they had already been doing work using the old method with the Retweet API. You can find the API documentation here . And Twitter has also shared a picture of how the functionality may look on Twitter.com. Obviously, things have changed since the initial announcement. Note the icons now under tweets, as well as the Retweet tab system. It’s important to note that this view is not the main Twitter stream, as you can see on the right hand side, this stuff resides in a new “Retweets” column. Molina notes that this is just one potential mock-up for how it will look on Twitter.com. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
The Perfect App To Start Your Weekend Off With A Drink – Or Several Drinks. Fast. Top
I love the fact that Power Music Hour, a new app for the iPhone, never once mentions drinking in its App Store page description. But anyone who has been to college in the past decade will know exactly what this app is for: A drinking game. A “Power Hour” is a game in which you must drink one shot of beer every minute for an hour (there are variations). Yes, that’s 60 shots of beer. Yes, that will get you very, very drunk. But again, this app never once mentions drinking in its description, and instead implies that it may just be fun to listen to music for a minute at a time. I love it. Then I dove into the App Store and looked at some other “Power Hour” apps — there are a ton of them. And hilariously, none seem to mention drinking at all. One, Hour of Power, has a description that even reads as follows: Ever needed a one minute timer to pace yourself while listening to music? With Hour of Power, you can play one minute of any artists, albums, songs, or playlists from your iPod. When exercising, you can use your music to tell you when to switch weights or activities. When jogging, you can use it to tell you when to change speeds. Exercising? Jogging? Ha! We all know what these apps are for, even if they found a rather brilliant loophole in Apple’s App approval system: Simply create a drinking game app, don’t mention the drinking part, and you’ll get a nice 4+ rating, rather than a much more restrictive one (or possibly even rejection). But we’re going to focus on Power Music Hour because at least they were honest in their email to us about the app: Howdy TechCrunchers, Hope you’re all having a lovely week, but in case you’re not we’d like to give you the opportunity to forget all those blog posts you were meaning to post and take a sec to check out our new app, the perfect companion to a 30-rack and an office full of writers. Let us kindly introduce Power Music Hour, the best (if not first) power hour application for the iPhone & iPod Touch. So take a load off, grab your favorite drink(s), and enjoy yourself. Hey, your lunch break is an hour long, right? The app itself is great as a Power Hour app. It takes the music that on your iPhone or iPod touch and cycles through it in 60-second intervals (you can also make it longer or shorter). There is then an audible “ding” when that minute is up, and the song changes. Back in the day, we used to have to use a stop watch to do Power Hours, this is much, much better! Find Power Music Hour in the App Store here . It is $0.99. Please drink responsibly. Or, please listen to music for a minute at a time responsibly. While jogging. Or whatever. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TC50 DemoPit Startup Fresh Sliced News Launches News And Blog Aggregator Top
While RSS may be slowly dying, startups are still building interesting products around the stale technology. Launched at TechCrunch 50’s DemoPit, Fresh Sliced News is a free Adobe Air powered-desktop application that lets you to build a personalized newspaper from your favorite news sources on the web. Once you’ve downloaded the app, you can create personalized sections on the app such as “Technology,” “Food,” “Fashion.” Within each section Fresh Sliced News lets you pull in the RSS feeds of 140 news sites and blogs. You can also add other RSS feeds manually if you have the feed’s URL. Content is automatically added to the app and items are given more visual prominence corresponding to their importance, which is determined two criteria— the level of engagement a news story is receiving on the internet (gauged by PostRank’s technology) and the interests a user has demonstrated in the subject matter of the news on the application. So if I tend to read more news about wine in my “food” section, the articles about wine will be more prominent within the app. When you hover over an article, a pop-up window appears with a snapshot of the content. When you click on a post, you are taken, via a separate window, to the article’s site, where you can read the post and browse the site. I especially like how you don’t have to leave the app to read the content on a news site. The app itself is visually appealing and easy to read. It doesn’t appear cluttered, which can be a problem for sites and apps that are aggregating news stories and large amounts of content. Of course, Fresh Sliced News faces its biggest competition from Google Reader and the plethora of other RSS feed aggregators on the web so it might be tough for the startup to gain serious traction. But if you can get past the strange quirks and bugs of Adobe Air, Fresh Sliced News is worth a look. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TC50 Demopit Company TweetFunnel Launches Enterprise-Friendly Twitter Publishing Platform Top
As more and more businesses dip their toes in the Twitter stream, there’s a need for enterprise-focused Twitter applications that cater to businesses’ needs from the microblogging platform. TechCrunch50 demopit company TweetFunnel is business-friendly publishing platform for Twitter. The web-based application is both a Twitter client and a platform for businesses to manage all their Twitter accounts. TweetFunnel lets you aggregate and use multiple Twitter accounts, and also makes it easy for several employees to post to one Twitter account. Users can also schedule, monitor and assign posting of Tweets within the platform. And TweetFunnel offers Bit.ly link analytics within its platform. TweetFunnel breaks down users into three different categories—administrators, publishers and contributors. The administrator has permissions to add users to the account and to review and publish tweets. Publishers also have the ability to review and publish tweets and contributors can add tweets to the review queue, but cannot publish tweets. The platform is appealing and has a number of compelling features for businesses, including the ability to time and assign Tweets. Of course, TweetFunnel will face competition from the growing number of clients and services that provide variations of enterprise-friendly Twitter clients, including PeopleBrowsr, ViralHeat, and Socialseek. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
TechCrunch50 Wrap-Up. Congrats To All The Startups Who Made It. Top
To all those startups who made it to TechCrunch50 this year, whether it was on stage or in the DemoPit, congratulations and thank you. We wouldn’t be here if there weren’t so many creative entrepreneurs out there trying to build something worthwhile out of nothing but ideas, sweat, and a little risk capital. A little risk can go a long why. And while it is true that this year’s crop brought fewer wild ideas than in the past, it is also true that by and large there were a lot more solid ideas as well. One of the best things about TechCrunch50 is not what happens on stage, but what happens before companies even get there. Startups that don’t even have a working demo or a product are forced to build one just to be considered. So many startup founders at TechCrunch50, even those who don’t make it to the final 50, have told me how valuable this selection process is. There is nothing like a deadline to focus your ideas. And once you are there, the dealmaking in the DemoPit was intense. Over the course of the two-day conference, we covered all 50 finalist demos, put up more than a dozen video interviews, and reported announcements made at TC50 from Bing , Facebook , Google , AOL , and MySpace . Even the TC50 winner from two years ago, Mint , had its own little announcement. If you weren’t one of the nearly 2,000 people in attendance, perhaps you were one of the 97,855 unique viewers who caught some of the presentations streamed live on video. The video was shot and uploaded by the team at Ustream , who also were able to cut and upload archived video clips for each presentation within an hour of each one. Those video clips are embedded at the bottom of each post and is probably the best way to relive the experience. There was so much happening at the conference, even if you were there you missed half of it. Below is a handy list of links to all of our TC50 coverage, including every company demo, announcement, backstage interview, and commentary. There is also an extensive list of links to other coverage (if we are missing something, let us know) and, at the very bottom, to Crunchbase profiles of each of the 50 finalists. TC50 Winner: RedBeacon TC50 Finalists: Threadsy AnyClip CitySourced Best Presentation: iMo Best International Company: Trollim Microsoft BizSpark Award Winner: AnyClip Perkins Coie Award WInner Toybots Demopit Winners: oDesk YourVersion Socialwok Chyngle The TC50 Video: The TC50 Video Photos: Flickr Stream TC50 Companies in Order of Appearance: Penn and Teller StorySomething Clasemovil ToonsTunes SealTale iTwin FluidHTML ToyBots Spawn Labs Clicker 5:1 DataXu SeatGeek HealthyWage Rackup Udorse iMo RedBeacon Yext LocalBacon Refmob TheSwop Mota Motors oDesk YourVersion ClientShow Metricly Affective Interfaces CitySourced Trollim CrowdFlower Cocodot LearnVest BreakThrough Glide Health Sprowtt Thoora Insttant Perpetually AnyClip CrowdFusion Hark! Threadsy lissn Radiusly Stribe Clixtr The Whuffie Bank Socialwok Chyngle Interviews: Penn and Teller Ron Conway Jason Hirschhorn Jim Lanzone Ross Levinsohn Marissa Mayer Marc Andreessen Paul Graham Tony Hsieh CitySourced Kevin Rose Bradley Horowitz Tim O’Reilly Dick Costolo Dick Costolo (again) Reid Hoffman Panels: Advertising Commentary: TechCrunch Drinking Game American Flag Is Toybots Dreaming Big Enough? Memo To Start-ups: You’re Supposed To Be Changing the World, Remember? Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Europa Announcements: Facebook Prototypes Facebook AIM Google Fast Flip Bing Visual Search MySpace Has Built Its Own Recommendation Engine, And They're
 

CREATE MORE ALERTS:

Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted

Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope

Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more

News - Only the news you want, delivered!

Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more

Weather - Get today's weather conditions




You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)