Friday, September 4, 2009

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CrunchBoard: Threadless, SlideShare, and More! Top
If you're on the hunt for a new job, check out our CrunchBoard . We've added nearly 50 new jobs from leading internet businesses in the last two weeks. Here's a quick sample: Senior Developer Threadless - Chicago, IL VP, Products TokBox, Inc. - San Francisco, CA Senior Operations Engineer SlideShare - San Francisco, CA Marketing Manager TrialPlay- Mountain View, CA Operations Manager, Digital Media International MTV Networks International - New York, NY For job hunters in Europe, check out our Europe CrunchBoard. Click here to see all the jobs on CrunchBoard. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
MG Explains Why ISPs Want To Lower The Definition Of Broadband Top
Video Games - E3 2009 - Attack of the Show What’s the deal with Comcast, Verizon, and other ISPs petitioning the FCC to lower the definition of broadband? It’s all about money—broadband stimulus money—MG Siegler explains on G4’s Attack of the Show . As the Obama administration looks to expand broadband access to rural and urban areas that are still under-served, the ISPs want to lower what constitutes broadband so that they can get some of the billions of dollars in stimulus money without shelling out as much to actually deliver the broadband access the stimulus package is designed to create. Those phone and cable companies are tricky. Watch the video above. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
New TechCrunch50 Logo, And Our Apologies To Apple Top
We’re happy to show off our new TechCrunch50 logo this morning. The old logo, which is below, was getting a little stale. The logo was created by DESIGN about TOWN , who worked with us over the last few weeks on a number of concepts. The goal of the logo is to convey a sense of community and discussion. Thus, the text chat bubble. Real time feedback from the audience and judges to launching startups is a crucial part of the culture of TechCrunch50. Our apologies to Apple, who may think they now own the idea of a text bubble . If you want to discuss, you know where to find us. And we promise we were locked into this design before the news about the supposed trademark. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Watch Out Baidu, China Clamps Down On Music Piracy Top
Yesterday, China’s Ministry of Culture (MoC), warned that it would strengthen checks and policing of online music content. The MoC said that search engines, which have been a source of pirated music in China, can only provide search information for tracks from legitimate music companies. This move may pose as a serious problem for China’s most popular search engine Baidu, which has long faced legal issues surrounding its index of pirated music. According to the report, the MoC is requiring that companies providing online music streams or downloads gain approval as “Internet culture companies,” and only companies that have directly obtained broadcasting or licensing rights can apply for approval. Imported music that is already broadcast online in China but has not been approved must be submitted to the MoC before December 31, 2009. The impact this will have on Baidu is noted by Pali Research’s analyst Tian Hou, who estimates that as much as 80 percent of Baidu's traffic is from music search. Hou says that with respect to music search results, most of the links provided are posted by illegitimate music companies. If these links are cut off, says Hou, traffic to Baidu could decrease. According to comScore, Baidu had 145 million unique visitors in July of 2009 worldwide (with more than 95 percent of those coming from Asia), while its MP3 search engine attracted 47 million uniques, which is only 32 percent but still significant. For July, Baidu was ranking fifth amongst most visited search engines worldwide, behind Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com. The success of Baidu has been credited to its index of music which is available from its front page, something Google caught onto last year when it entered a joint venture with Top100.cn to offer free and legal music in China. Baidu’s potential troubles could be good news for Google China, which took the beta label off of its music search engine this March and signed major deals to license music from four major music labels (Warner, Universal, EMI and Sony). Google China, however, just lost its top executive , Kaifu Lee. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Background Location Finds A Loop(t)hole On The iPhone Top
A location-based social network is not going to truly take off on the iPhone until it can run in the background. You know it, I know it, and even Loopt , which makes such an app, knows it. That’s why they’ve done something about it. Beginning today, Loopt is rolling out a trial for background location on the iPhone. Yes, you read that right. If you’ve been following the iPhone at all over the past couple of years, you’re undoubtedly asking yourself how this is possible, since the device does not allow third party apps to run in the background. Has Apple changed its mind about background apps? Not yet . Instead, Loopt is partnering with other companies in the mobile industry for what it’s calling “Always-On Location Service.” Loopt co-founders Sam Altman and Alok Deshpande would not disclose the names of any of these partners, noting that the system set up to make this happen is very “complex” and involves a number of players. But at least one of them has to be AT&T, which is, of course, the network the iPhone runs on. Loopt, which seems to be particularly good at carrier relationships, has cut deals with AT&T in the past. What this means is that these guys have gotten around the iPhone’s limitation by keeping a pipeline open on AT&T’s side that is constantly sending your location data to Loopt. This doesn’t require any app to be running on your iPhone — not even Loopt — and the location data will be sent even when you’re on a call or surfing the web on your iPhone. Most importantly, because there is no app required to do this, it doesn’t drain your battery life, Altman tells us. So what does Apple think about all of this? Altman refused to comment on that, but given the cordial relationship Loopt has had with Apple (being featured both at WWDC last year and in an iPhone commercial), it seems likely that the two sides at least talked about this before Loopt pulled the trigger. That said, because no application is actually involved in this process, it looks like Loopt has essentially found a loophole around Apple on this one. Privacy will undoubtedly be a major concern with such a feature. But Altman notes that you have to go to a website to actually sign up for this, and you can turn it off or on at anytime on that site or via an SMS message. And he believes some of privacy concerns will fade as people get used to such services. “The future of location-based services is always-on,” he says. I agree, this seems like a huge win for Loopt (well, if users are okay with paying for the service, more on that below). I’ll be using it a lot more now because first of all, I don’t actually have to open the app to update — but more importantly, none of my contacts will either. So oddly, I probably will be opening the app itself more now too because of that. And eventually, you could see such background location functionality playing a roll in advertising on the iPhone. They way this will work is that you will be able to receive alerts (emails or text messages) when people or places of interest are nearby to your current location. Loopt can also now build what it calls a “Life Graph” for you — basically, keep a log of where you’ve been. Again, this will be opt-in. Altman would not comment on if its competitors like Whrrl or Brightkite could also strike similar deals, but Deshpande confirms that no one else is offering this (at least not yet). And Loopt is getting ready to come out with a version 2.0 of its iPhone app that should take on other competitors like Foursquare . As it seems clear that AT&T is the key factor in making something like this happen, it’s nice to see them doing something innovative to actually help their iPhone customers get a feature that many of us have long wanted. Assuming it works well, it might even be enough to make us forget the whole months-late MMS thing. But this good news has a price. $3.99 a month, to be specific, which users can sign up for on this site . Initially, Loopt is going to limit the trial to 5,000 testers. Disclosure : Loopt offers a TechCrunch branded version of the service here . [photo: flickr/ Rev Dan Catt ] CrunchBase Information Loopt iPhone AT&T Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Creately Releases Its Simple Diagramming And Design Tool To The Masses Top
Creately, an online diagramming and design application launched by Cinergix and showcased at TechCrunch50’s Demopit in 2008, is unveiling its online tool to the greater public (the startup has been in private beta). Creately lets anyone create create and collaborate on flow charts, wireframes, network diagrams, sitemaps and more within its site. The key to Creately’s application is that manages to harness the abilities and tools that traditional design and graphics software offer, but packages this functionality in an easy to use application that allows for collaboration between users. The design features are varied but relatively easy to use and intuitive. For example, Contextual Toolbars appear when you click on any object on the drawing canvas and depending on the object and its size will offer all the commonly used operations within the toolbar. Collaboration is another crucial part to the design process, says co-founder Charanjit Singh, so the startup built in commenting, sharing, publishing, embedding and the ability to publish directly to Twitter. Plus, many of its offerings are free to use. With this public launch, Creately is also unveiling its pricing model and monetization strategy. Creately will offer a free plan that lets users makes and unlimited amount of public diagrams that can are published on Creately and visible to anyone. Free customers are restricted to a maximum of 5 collaborators and all diagrams will be published with the Creately logo. Diagrams can also be embedded and shared. The paid version will offer an unlimited amount of privately-hosted diagrams that will not have the Creately logo. But it’s unclear how much Creately’s paid version will cost and we’ve contacted the company for further explanation. Microsoft offers a design program, Visio, that’s has similar functionality to Creately but is more complicated to use and is not web-based. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
CampusBuddy Gets A Facelift And More Social Skills In Time For The New School Year Top
For millions of students across the country summer is coming to a close, and CampusBuddy , a Facebook application and web portal that focuses on school courses and grades, is looking to capitalize on the Back-To-School rush. Today the site is launching a totally revamped homepage and Facebook application , a new text book search engine, and a number of new social features that it hopes will better connect students with their classmates. CampusBuddy is also adopting a freemium model today, with hopes of converting its rapidly growing base of users into paying customers. We last covered CampusBuddy last fall, when the site launched to offer reports on grades handed out by professors at hundreds of universities across the country, which students can use to help figure out which classes they want to take. Since then, the site has been making some strong progress: in addition to the grade reports it’s also focusing on helping prospective students connect with colleges as they leave high school, and it’s also focusing more on helping students connect with eachother. It was also chosen as a Facebook Verified App, which CEO Michael Moradian says has been helpful in reaching new students — the company’s Facebook application has jumped from around 30,000 active users during the last school year to over 60,000 active users today. Back in the old days of Facebook, when the site still revolved around college students, it offered a feature called “Courses” that allowed students to publicly display which courses they were taking. The app could be quite useful, but it was also limited, with plenty of room for improvement. Rather than continue to build out its own app, Facebook dropped its native Courses and left it up to developers to build their own applications. CampusBuddy is one of the leading apps vying to take over this role, and today’s update may help in that race. The site’s Facebook application will now offer a Wall for every course at every University in its system, essentially giving students a central place to hold their course-specific discussions, which could prove very useful. But in order to participate or even see these conversations students will have had to install the CampusBuddy app, and the app’s 60,000 users is still only a drop in the bucket compared to the number of students on Facebook. That said, if CampusBuddy can become the de facto college app on the site, its user-base could snowball. Moradian is optimistic about this possibility, and says that CampusBuddy is the most popular application on Facebook to let students search through a database of courses at their school, explaining that while there are some other popular apps that allow users to enter the courses they’re taking, they’re all user submitted which can result in duplicate entries. The CampusBuddy app itself is quite robust, featuring areas for general discussions, schedules, and more — I would have much rather used something like this than the old Facebook Courses app during my school days. Now it just needs a wider student community to embrace it. Also worth noting: CampusBuddy is now switching to a freemium model. Up until now the startup has offered its database of grades free of charge — now it will begin charging a small fee for users to access the grades and related analysis as part of its ‘Academic Edge’ package. Access costs $4.99 for three months or $8.99 for a year (it grows cheaper if you buy multiple years at a time). Students likely won’t be too pleased with the change, but competitors like MyEdu (formerly PickaProf) have had freemium models for some time now, so this isn’t particularly surprising. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 

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