Tuesday, September 29, 2009

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Dropbox Meets The iPhone; Access Files On The Go Top
Dropbox , the easy to use file access manager which syncs your files across all your computers and the web, has introduced an iPhone application to make it even easier to access your files anywhere in the world. After almost 7 weeks of waiting, Apple has finally approved the application. With this new iPhone app, users will get access to all their Dropbox documents, PDF’s, pictures, videos and much more. Dropbox also introduced offline viewing in the iPhone app, with “Favorites.” If you add a file to your 'Favorites', they'll be accessible at any time. To do so, just hit the star at the bottom of any file, and it’ll be added. Otherwise, your files stay in the cloud. One of Dropbox’s core features is sharing your files and folders stored in the cloud with anyone else who has a Dropbox account, and the iPhone is no exception. Users can easily share their Dropbox files and folders from their iPhone to any other Dropbox user by putting in their email address, just like on the web. The app allows users to upload photos for 3G users, and videos if you have an iPhone 3GS. What’s really cool about Dropbox’s iPhone app is that you can even stream music and movies from your Dropbox straight to your iPhone, without any noticeable delay. Dropbox’s app is also heavily integrated into Apple’s camera API with straight photo and video uploading available too. Just a few days ago, Dropbox reached 2 million users. Dropbox was a finalist at the 2008 TechCrunch50 conference. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Apps For Everything: Apple Continues To Try To Improve App Discovery Top
Apple today has rolled out a new series of pages on the iPhone section of its website called “ Apps For Everything .” The idea here is to create an easy way for consumers to find apps based around certain categories that they may be interested in. The categories are: apps for cooks apps for keeping current apps for the great outdoors apps for music apps for work apps for music apps for students apps for moms & dads apps for working out apps for going out apps for managing money apps for traveling apps for fun & games As you can see, all of these seem geared towards your average consumer across varying demographics. That’s hardly surprising seeing as with 2 billion app downloads (and counting) now, Apple clearly has a very wide reach. But app discovery has been a problem for Apple in the past . It’s a good problem to have — it exists because there are so many apps (85,000) — but Apple is clearly realizing it needs to do something about it. The App Genius feature was one step, this hand-picked curation is clearly another. I’ve asked Apple how it picked the topics for these apps, as well as the apps themselves, and will update if I hear back. But I suspect that just like the other areas where Apple highlights certain apps (such as in the App Store itself), it is doing so based on (what it deems to be) merit and the ability to show off some cool functionality of the iPhone and iPod touch. As Jonathan points out in the comments below, this is also a great way for Apple to expose apps to the broader web, for users who don’t have or don’t want to load up iTunes to learn about some apps. Much of the apps featured seem to be ones that Apple has featured in the past in the App Store or even in its commercials. It should be no surprise that developers who have been a part of this attention in the past say that the spotlight has helped drive sales through the roof. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
With oDesk's iPhone App, Bosses Can Now Monitor Workers From The Beach Top
Startup oDesk was voted as a TechCrunch50’s demopit winner thanks to the launch of a new iPhone application that allows project administrators to monitor the work stream of their team members while they’re on the go. Today, oDesk’s free app is available on the App Store. The stream features photos of your team’s workplace, keystroke events, and lets you know when your workers are checking in and out. You can also see each team member’s latest work memo, local time, and billing status for work. oDesk has been around for a while, offering a “marketplace for talent” that makes it easy to hire workers remotely. The company currently has over 340,000 providers, with 12,200+ jobs that are open. oDesk has also launched an API Center to encourage developers to create custom workspaces around oDesk tools. The API allows for users to log-in from outside of oDesk’s applications, the ability to search oDesk’s provider data and profiles, and lets users retrieve snapshots of worker activities. oDesk is backed by Benchmark Capital and has raised $29 million , most recently a $15 million round last year. The oDesk API is implemented using a REST web service interface that is available to developers looking to build oDesk functionality and content into custom applications. Aiming to build a cohesive and community-based approach to customizing oDesk tools, the oDesk API shares a common token authentication system that allows seamless access between products and services. Visit the oDesk API Center at: http://developers.odesk.com/ Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
The VC, The Professor, And The Valley Of Death Top
Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Vivek Wadhwa, an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Executive in Residence at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @ vwadhwa . Everyone seems to be waiting for the next great discovery which will change the world. But, believe it or not, the next Internet, semiconductor, or breakthrough in MRI technology may already have been discovered. It's just languishing on the shelves of the university research labs you drive by on your way to work every day. University researchers don't know how to commercialize their discoveries and smart, hungry entrepreneurs looking to meet the next Larry or Sergey don't know how to find them. These parallel universes rarely meet (well, except sometimes at Stanford). In 2007, U.S. universities performed $48.8 billion of research and filed 17,589 U.S. patent applications. In that same year universities received back revenues for licensing and royalties on patents of less than $2 billion. Those revenues include ongoing royalties from all of the research licensed over the past 40 years. The implication is clear. An astonishing amount of promising research is left in the lab. When I say this to university administrators, they get incredibly defensive (almost like the VC's I pissed off with my last post .) They rightfully argue that the role of the university is to teach and to add to the world's knowledge base. The real benefit comes from the students who universities educate, who go and start the Apples and Microsoft's. No argument there. But we have a goldmine of knowledge and potential innovation locked in our research universities. This goldmine could fuel the next two decades of economic growth. It is time to mine this goldmine. I'll sketch out a little treasure map for you in part two on this topic, posting later this week, but first, you need to know more about the inhabitants of the other dimension. Some of the brightest people in the universe work in our universities. After getting a science or engineering Masters degree (which could earn them six-figure salaries in Silicon Valley) they slog it out for 4-6 years at close to minimum wage to get their PhD's. Then they wait another decade to *maybe* become a full professor, usually by working at a series of lesser university jobs in less than optimal cities or towns. Even those PhDs who get tenure usually don’t make anything near what senior tech guys make in industry. Clearly they are not in it for the money. Rather their twin desires are often to acquire knowledge for knowledge’s sake and to do good for the world. I know these are foreign concepts to some of you, but this is the academic world. And by the way, they often see the business world as the "evil empire" that robs their discoveries of purity and puts a dollar sign on anything it can. For those reasons, they are usually more concerned about disseminating knowledge and publishing academic papers than creating patents that limit how this knowledge can be used. (I have known many academics who refuse to file patents because they don’t believe in them). These purists worry about the conflicts of interest that can arise when taking money from industry might be perceived to color their research. And they want to ensure that their teaching activities are not adversely impacted by the time spent on commercialization efforts. To make things worse, the funding which universities received from the government usually only covers the cost of writing some papers. They don't get enough to build a prototype or prove their technology. This is what most VC's want to see at a minimum before investing in technology, to make sure they are not investing in a “science project,” the industry term for leap-of-faith investments in lab science discoveries. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of university technology withers on the vine. This chasm between promising benchwork and investable prototype, between what professors and VCs can and are willing to do, is also known as the "Valley of Death". The challenge is to create a bridge between these researchers and the VCs or idea-seeking entrepreneurs who know to turn an idea into an invention. Many of the ideas and breakthroughs are easy to exploit and just require enterprising minds to come together with inquiring minds. But others require the investment and support which only VC's can provide. (Hey, I never said that venture capital didn't serve an important purpose – just that VC's don't innovate.) Taking these types of hard science discoveries from bench to fab or factory is sometimes very, very hard work that often does require VC capital, fat Rolodexes, and regulatory and industry specific operational expertise. But someone has to take these discoveries into a stage beyond "science project" – and this is where the entrepreneurs need to step in again—to hand VC's the "technology on a platter" that they expect. I asked a colleague at Duke University, Barry Myers – who is considered to be one of the leading biomedical researchers in the world and also happens to work part-time at a VC firm (weird, isn't it?), to help me create a guide for the adventurous entrepreneur. I must warn you that this isn't going to be easy. In my next post, I’ll walk you through what Barry said. Yes, we've got a cliffhanger. (Photo credit: Jon Sullivan ) Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Echofon (Formerly TwitterFon) Unveils A Simple And Fast Native Mac Twitter Client Top
Yesterday, when I wrote that Tweetie was the best iPhone Twitter client not everyone agreed. Fair enough, there are a few other really great ones including Birdfeed (which we’ve covered here ) and Echofon (the app formerly known as TwitterFon ). And the team behind Echofon has today rolled something that puts it ahead of Tweetie in at least one regard: A native Mac client that syncs with the iPhone client. While Tweetie does have a ( very nice ) Mac client, there is no syncing between it and the iPhone version just yet. It is coming, but Echofon has beaten them to the punch. This puts in in the league with TweetDeck, which also has a desktop and iPhone client that sync , but Echofon is nicer because it’s a native Mac app rather than running on Adobe Air. (Seesmic also has an iPhone app in the works that will sync with its desktop client, though that is again, Air-based.) So how is Echofon for Mac? It’s great. It’s super simple and very fast. It has a very clean design that is entirely silver and white which features your tweet stream, a new tweet input box along the bottom, and columns for Mentions, Messages, and Search along the top. You are alerted to new message updates by a number (the number of messages) placed next to the column name in which the new messages reside. Updates seem to come in quickly (every couple minutes or so). Adding a picture to a tweet is as easy as dragging one from your desktop into the new message area. Clicking on someone’s name or picture unveils a new tab that displays all of that users information, including most recent updates. And yes, there is multiple Twitter account support. There is also the ability to set different types of notifications for new messages including badging dock icons and Growl notifications. Also cool is a Highlights area which allows you to keep track of keywords that you don’t want to miss. Yes, this is basically saved search, but it gives you alerts, just like track of old. Another nifty little feature is that when you click the reply button on a tweet, the message you’re replying to appears right above the tweet entry field so you remember what you’re supposed to be talking about. It is important to note that sync only works right now for Echofon Pro users, but if you’ve been addicted to Echofon, hopefully you are using that anyway. (If not, get it, it’s $4.99 .) Eventually, the plan is to offer the syncing funtionality with the free version of Echofon as well. Currently, Echofon for Mac is being offered as a public beta. That means it may be a little buggy, and also missing some features (un, manual refresh?), but is also free. Eventually, when it’s ready to launch, it will carry a price (just as Tweetie for Mac does). Find it here . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
After Getting In Bed Together, Nielsen Can't Stop Gushing About How Great Facebook Is Top
It’s all a little unseemly, if you ask me. Last week, Nielsen and Facebook declared that they were “In A Relationship” together with a new product Nielsen is rolling out called BrandLift, which is supposed to measure brand awareness of ads on the social network with opt-in polls. Almost immediately after the two companies announced their strategic love affair, Nielsen started putting out glowing reports about Facebook and how much time people are spending on social networks. Ads on social networks don’t perform as well as ads on other parts of the Web, but there’s tons of cheap inventory (i.e., pageviews), so advertisers don’t have much choice but to be there. Anything that can help justify their spending 119 percent more than last year on social network ads (Nielsen) is good for Facebook. For instance, one Nielsen study found that found people at work spent more than seven times as many hours on social networking sites in 2008 than the year before, and that half of all online workers log onto Facebook at the office and spend more time there than on any other site (an average of 3 hours and 10 minutes per day). The message was clear: if you want to reach people online, you have to advertise on Facebook. Then three days later, Nielsen followed up with another wet kiss, er, impartial report. Not only is Facebook the most popular social network (like we didn’t know that already), but it is also the richest. Nielsen trotted out data showing that Facebook users are more affluent and urban than their counterparts at MySpace. According to the Nielsen study, affluent people are “25% more likely to use Facebook” than poorer people, while people in the bottom third of the income pyramid are “37% more likely to use MySpace than those in the top third.” Again, for advertisers wanting to reach the rich and fabulous, there is one clear choice: Facebook. And if they want to convince themselves that those people are actually paying attention to their ads, Nielsen will sell them its new BrandLift product, which just happens to work only on Facebook right now. What do you know? The stars are aligned. Now, I am not suggesting that people on Facebook aren’t all rich and fabulous. You obviously are. Just look at your pictures. I want to advertise to you right now. Where do I sign up? (Photo credit: Flickr/ Helga Weber ) Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
gpsAssassin Could Be The iPhone's Next Highly Addictive Hit Game Top
The iPhone has all the ingredients necessary to build the first popular location-based game that combines the real world with fantasy — a scenario long dreamt of by gamers. A handful of games like Parallel Kingdom have gotten some traction, but they have yet to really catch on on a large scale. And while Foursquare has gotten quite a bit of attention, particularly in tech circles, its gameplay elements are very rudimentary. Now a new game called gpsAssassin may have struck gold by fusing location and the popular campus game Assassins with the text-based games that have become immensely popular on social networks, Twitter , and the iPhone. Founder Nicholas Holland says that he’s had some difficulty describing the game, largely because it looks very much iMob, Mafia Wars, and similar games that don’t rely on your location when you play them. And while gpsAssassin may share some of the same mechanics with these — it’s primarily text based with leveling, attack/armor ratings, and other key RPG elements — its location features turn it into a different beast entirely. After picking a nickname, the game presents you list of possible actions, the most important of which is “Scan for targets”. This will bring up a list of any players within a five mile radius (anyone within a two mile radius is shown under a list of ’short range’ targets). After tapping on someone’s nickname, you enter Attack mode, where you choose from a list of actions. This is where the game’s real fun kicks in: you can choose from a list of available attacks created by other users, which range from silly (’Throw Nail Polish” or “Robotic Kitty”) to more conventional forms of violence. Better yet, you can get creative and think up your own attack, which is especially fun when you personally know the person you’re attacking. Your target will then be informed that you’ve attacked them with whatever weapon you choose, and depending on your strength they’ll find out who emerged as the victor. This is all, of course, dependent on where you are physically located. If your favorite victim picks up shop and drives across town then you won’t be able to attack them with your ‘Gospel of Chuck Norris’ or ‘Mullet of Fury’. Holland says that gamers have been known to actually change their driving routes so that they can get in their attack on an unsuspecting victim and get out of dodge before they have a chance at retaliation. He also says that he’s seen neighboring offices band together to wage war against a cross-town competitor. Clearly, there’s plenty of room for friendly (or not so friendly) rivalries to emerge. While most people will probably spend most of their time thinking of especially infuriating (and hilarious) attacks, gamers can further boost their stats by fighting against non-player characters. And the game offers virtual goods that you can use to boost your stats and win/loss percentage without the time investment, which is where the game will make most of its money. The application has been available in beta since February but Holland staggered its release by initially pricing it at $5.00, then $.99. Now that it’s ready for mass consumption, gpsAssassin is available for free, though there are a handful of premium versions that come with more of the game’s virtual currency. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Project Playlist Pushes The Line Between Music Search And Music Hosting Top
If there is a poster child for the battered Web music startup, Project Playlist is it. The company had to fight lawsuits from the record labels , is still trying to iron out licensing deals with those labels, lost its last CEO Owen van Natta to MySpace, lost its CFO Mike Sheridan , and by the looks of it is losing its audience . What else could go wrong? Well, it looks like the self-styled music search engine is actually hosting MP3s of major label artists via content delivery networks such as Limelight. If you search for Britney Spears songs, for example, the second result is “(You Drive Me) Crazy.” The originating site where the MP3 was hosted, http://www.sarzamin.org/ , is no longer available. But not to worry because Project Playlist cached the song on its CDN, Limelight Networks. Khalid Shaikh, a TechCrunch reader and developer who wanted to harness Project Playlist to create his own music site, discovered this arrangement and sent me the screencast above to prove it. In the video, Shaikh speculates on the legality of this method of caching, which is impossible to say one way or the other without knowing the terms of Project Playlists’ licensing agreements with the labels. Project Playlist does have a licensing agreement with Sony , which owns the Zomba Label that Spears is on. But it certainly is a strange way to build a catalog of songs. And there are plenty of other examples, such as Alanis Morissette , who is on Warner Music, which is the one major lbel that still has not dropped its lawsuit against Project Playlist. Project Playlist bills itself as a music search engine that lets people share playlists, not the songs underlying those playlists per se. On its About page , here’s how the service describes itself: Playlist.com is an information location tool similar to Google® and Yahoo!® but devoted entirely to the world of music. Our purpose is to help you find and enjoy music legally throughout the web in the same way that other search engines help you find webpages, images, and other media and . . . Playlist.com allows you to discover all of this free music legally because we respect the rights of copyright holders and we insist that you do as well. . . . If an artist tells us that our search engine is linking to an illegally posted song, we will immediately take down the link to that music file. The site doesn’t say anything about caching songs which have been taken down, for whatever reason, from other sites. But it does raise some interesting questions. Has Project Playlist crossed the line from a music search engine merely indexing the music that is already freely available on the Web to a music hosting service (albeit through its CDN proxies)? Or is Project Playlist acting just like Google or any other search engine here, merely caching the most popular content in its index? When I contacted Josh Brooks, vice president of programming and content, he seemed genuinely surprised and said that this is the first time he’s ever seen anything like that. After viewing the screencsat, he says: “Watching that troubles me and it should trouble anyone trying to do anything n digital music. It is a problem that has to be fixed. All I can say is it is going to be remedied because it needs to be.” He also says that Project Playlist is in the middle of negotiations with labels to stream licensed songs directly: “Playlist.com technology neatly aggregates song searches on the web and directs a user to a stream of music from the site where the song is hosted. In the very near future, our hosted music service will find a linked stream and replace it with a stream from the broad library of music we have licensed. Users can then listen and share the music on Playlist.com or through an off-site embeddable player. There are dozens of linked services out there. Playlist is actively working with the content owners to insure proper reporting and accounting for music we have licenses for.” in other words, Project Playlist doesn’t want to be a music search engine anymore. It is already moving away from through the way that it is caching songs, but it needs to host those songs in a more straightforward manner if it wants the labels to take it seriously. 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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