The latest from TechCrunch
- Twitter's Geolocation API Appears To Be Live. But Most Of You Are Lost.
- OpenCandy Suggests Apps You Might Actually Want During Installs, Lands NitroPDF
- BumpTop Goes Multi-Touch. Um, Awesome.
- Reader Survey: What Makes You Tick?
- Huddle Launches iPhone App, Microsoft Office Plug-In And Web Conferencing Tool
- The Selling Of Google AdWords
| Twitter's Geolocation API Appears To Be Live. But Most Of You Are Lost. | Top |
| I noticed something interesting tonight. In the new build of Tweetie 2 (not out yet) , a bunch of little red location markers started appearing next to tweets in my stream. Knowing that this new version was built using Twitter’s new Geolocation APIs , I inquired if this mean they had been turned on. Sure enough, they have, developer Loren Brichter just confirmed after talking to Twitter. But there’s a slight problem. Apparently, the reason these geotags are showing up for all tweets (even those not actually geotagged) is that the documentation was a little unclear of how to handle non-geotagged tweets, Brichter says. The result is that every single tweet is tagged with a location somewhere just off the coast of Africa, south of Ghana. Either this is Atlantis, the Island from Lost , or we have a problem. [Update on the location below] Brichter is aware of the issue and has already resolved it, and has resubmitted Tweetie 2 to the App Store for approval. Since no one officially has Tweetie 2 yet, this probably doesn’t affect you at all. But you have to wonder if other Twitter app developers were confused by this as well. If so, we could see a lot of apps with some wonky geolocation data. Twitter hasn’t yet responded to my request for more information. It’s not clear if they meant to turn this on tonight. We do know that they had originally planned to launch it last week at the Twitter Conference in LA, but it wasn’t quite ready yet. Earlier today, Twitter announced the new Lists feature , which will also feature an API. And of course, everyone is waiting for the Retweet API as well. Update : As our apparently geography major readers have informed me, the area just off the coast of Ghana is lat/long 0,0. This makes sense — there is no location data attached to these tweets, so apparently they default to 0,0. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco | |
| OpenCandy Suggests Apps You Might Actually Want During Installs, Lands NitroPDF | Top |
| Ah, the Windows install process. Long associated with repeated clicking of the “Next” button, it’s also home to one of the more shady practices to exist in modern software: the bundled application. Hapless users looking to get through the process as quickly as possible inevitably wind up installing some junk software that they don’t really want or need, only to scratch their heads when their browser is suddenly slowed down by a clunky new toolbar. Users may not like them, but many developers don’t want to scrap these bundled software packages entirely because they’re a steady source of income. OpenCandy , a startup that launched last year, may offer the solution by pairing up users with software they might actually want. And today it’s announcing that it’s been integrated with the latest version of PrimoPDF by Nitro PDF, the most popular freeware PDF creator. We’ve written about OpenCandy before, when it made the revolutionary decision to ban germ-spreading handshakes from company board meetings, but until now we haven’t explored the company’s product. From the user’s perspective it’s quite simple: when you go to install an application that uses OpenCandy, you’ll be presented at some point during the install flow with an option to install a sponsored application. It may sound just like those unwanted app installs that we’ve seen for years, but it has a few key differences. First, everything in OpenCandy is opt-in. While many apps default to the “install” option for these tag-along apps (which is why people accidentally install them), OpenCandy makes you click a checkbox make sure you really want the app. The company is also doing its best to only work with high quality applications — co-founder Chester Ng says that OpenCandy will only work with high quality publishers, and only suggest applications that it thinks people might want to actually use. Some apps that are currently being advertised through OpenCandy include doubleTwist , TuneUp , and Xobni — all apps we’ve covered before and don’t come with any nasty spyware. OpenCandy also brings some intelligence to the install process. Rather than bundling the same applications every time, OpenCandy rotates the applications it advertises, effectively serving as an ad network. It also tries to apply some intelligence to the process, suggesting apps that are complimentary to what the user is installing instead of choosing one at random. And unlike some of the bundles that include these tag-along apps as part of the initial download even if you don’t want them, OpenCandy only downloads one of these apps after you’ve stated that you want it. Finally, OpenCandy doesn’t collect any personally identifiable information. It does, however, collect some basic info (like whether or not the user decided to install the suggested application or if it wasn’t compatible with their computer). This helps them suggest better applications in the future, and Ng says that if an app is clearly underperforming (i.e. people don’t want it), OpenCandy will remove it from their list. This is obviously a tricky area — some people object to the idea of upselling applications during the install process at all. But provided it is consistent about advertising high quality apps, I think OpenCandy may be a good compromise: developers will still get paid for including these ads in their installers, and users may just stumble across a new application they actually want. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco | |
| BumpTop Goes Multi-Touch. Um, Awesome. | Top |
| What if the desktop on your computer was just like your actual desktop? That’s the core idea behind BumpTop , a really nice looking graphical overlay for Windows-based operating systems. But as cool as BumpTop looked , you still had to use your mouse and keyboard to manipulate it. As I made clear yesterday, I want those to die . So good news for me today: BumpTop is adding multi-touch support. And the result is awesome. When we think of multi-touch right now, most of us think of the iPhone. But really, with such a small screen, there are only so many gestures you can do. Multi-touch BumpTop greatly expands that roster, and includes several gestures that it claims to have patents for. Basically, they have gestures that use all of you fingers, and both hands, and even the side of hands. You can “lasso” things, “shove” them, “scrunch” them, and “crop” them. This graphic below shows a list of the gestures BumpTop offers that competitors don’t, including the ones that they apparently have patents on (labeled as “BT”). Naturally, for these multi-touch capacities to work, you’ll need a computer with a touch screen surface that supports multi-touch. Right now, those aren’t widely available. But all indications are that soon enough, there could be a range of devices on the market with such capabilities (sadly, this is Windows 7-only — so no, it won’t work on an Apple Tablet). If you don’t have one of those however, BumpTop will continue to work on a majority of Windows-based PCs just fine with more traditional input devices. The most obvious use of Mutli-touch BumpTop is with media, as you can easily manipulate images (watch the video below). But the service also works with documents (dragging them around, bunching them together, Google Gadgets, and even webpages as widgets. Also, there is social networking support, so if you edit an image in BumpTop, you can easily upload it immediately to Facebook or send it to Twitter. I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that as soon as I have a computer that can run this, I want this. If not, you’re crazy, just watch it in action below. And below that find more examples of its multi-touch gesture support. CrunchBase Information BumpTop 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 | |
| Reader Survey: What Makes You Tick? | Top |
| Top technology advertisers are finally catching on to the fact that we are kind of obsessive here at TechCrunch in our technology coverage and so are our readers. In fact, they’re want to understand why TechCrunch is such a big deal to so many different types of people (we do too.) To help them get a better understanding of us, we’ve constructed a quick 20-question survey that will help them get a better sense of how today’s leading start-ups and enterprises use social media, business and personal technology, and how TechCrunch influences your thinking about key strategic trends. Please take 5 minutes to complete our survey . We’ll publish the results here on TechCrunch. You’ll remember that back in May, we said thank you and good bye to our third-party sales agent, Federated Media. Heather, our CEO, decided our network metrics were strong enough to stand on their own. Turns out she was right (again). Since May, the TechCrunch network has added nearly 3 million additional readers and 6 million pages views. Our September audience stats now stand at more than 10.5 million unique readers (7 million from our sites and 3.5 million from RSS) and more than 22 million page views. To handle our network growth, we’ve hired Vaughn Brown as Sales Director. He comes to us from IDG where he was most recently working on the InfoWorld and Industry Standard brands. You can reach him at vaughn [at] techcrunch dot com to discuss custom programs and sponsorship ideas. And as a reminder, you can also buy impressions direct via our self-serve platform, hosted by isocket . Thanks for reading and for keeping us growing. Please fill out the survey so that advertisers can understand us better and we can keep paying our writers to serve you better. (Photo credit: Flickr/ Robbert van der Steeg) . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco | |
| Huddle Launches iPhone App, Microsoft Office Plug-In And Web Conferencing Tool | Top |
| Collaboration applications are becoming increasingly popular in the enterprise space. Startup Huddle.net has been steadily accumulating innovative features to its business-friendly collaboration platform and quickly adding big name companies, including Samsung and Panasonic, as clients. Huddle is a network of secure online workspaces where you can share files, collaborate on ideas, manage projects and organize virtual meetings. Today, Huddle is adding several more useful features to its platform—web conferencing, integration with Microsoft Office, and a much-awaited iPhone app. Huddle's web conferencing feature, which is similar to web-ex, lets users set up meetings, schedule recurring events, and share their desktop and content with other members of their workspace. Huddle has also sent up a partnership with InterCall, one of the world’s largest conference call providers, to handle phone conferencing. Huddle’s web conferencing tool is integrated with Outlook or Google calendar and users receive free conferencing minutes as a part of their monthly package and can also access low-cost international service plans. Huddle is also letting Microsoft office users seamlessly move between the productivity suite and the collaboration platform by launching a Microsoft Office plug-in that lets you save desktop files to Huddle save their desktop files directly into Huddle’s cloud-based storage, view and edit files, add new versions, request approvals and send notifications without opening a browser window. You’ll be able to access any edited Word documents that you’ve tweaked in the desktop app directly from Huddle. And this feature is enhanced by Huddle’s previous ability to use a Zoho-powered editor to work on Word and Excel files together directly in the browser. As a Microsoft BizSpark partner (we just announced Yammer’s BizSpark news a few weeks ago), Huddle is going to be developing a plug-in for SharePoint and and other Microsoft products in the near future. Currently, the MS Office plug-in works for the 2007 version but will be retrofitted to work with Microsoft Office 2010 next year. There was some speculation earlier this month about the fact that Huddle doesn’t have a mobile presence. But Huddle’s new iPhone app lets users have full access to document sharing, project tasks, discussions and whiteboards, as well as a complete view of the user’s personalized dashboard. Huddle can be also accessed on other cell phones by using third party applications such as Clustr. Huddle has also developed partnerships and integrations with LinkedIn and Ning to be included as apps on both social network. And the startup has a similar deal with Facebook, which allows you full access to all of Huddle's tools within the social network. And Huddle is affordable—there’s a free, ad-supported version available from the Huddle web site (which includes 1 workspace and 1GB of storage); three premium levels (which have increased workspace and storage) and an enterprise version with multiple managers, customization, advanced security, training, and increased support services. And Huddle allows for unlimited numbers of users for each account. Andy McLoughlin, Huddle’s co-founder and director of strategic development, tells methat while 55 percent of Huddle’s users (McLoughlin says total users amount in the “Hundreds of thousands”) are based in the U.S., Huddle is making a big play for the U.S. in the coming year, opening up offices in San Francisco and other areas. Considering that many of Huddle’s big-name clients are based in the U.S. such as Edelman and Disney, this is a smart move. Because of the startup’s multiple services, Huddle faces competition from a variety of startups and tech giants including, Lotus, Box.net, and WebEx. And of course, Huddle faces competition from Google Apps and the launch of Google Wave. But despite the competition in the “Enterprise 2.0″ space, Huddle has been steadily gaining traction and should be able to give even Google a run for its money. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco | |
| The Selling Of Google AdWords | Top |
| Throughout 2005, the year after the company went public on NASDAQ, Google commissioned multiple research agencies to run analysis on the importance of Internet search and search advertising in purchasing decisions across a variety of verticals. While part of this research – which the company probably still orders considering how important the business continues to be for Google’s bottom line – eventually finds its way to the Google AdWords product page , it’s interesting to gain some insight into what kind of studies the search giant commissioned and which conclusions the research agencies pulled from the data gathered from direct consumer surveys and other means. Below are some screenshots from internal documents used by Google to gauge the importance of keyword search in purchasing decisions for industries like B2B technology, logistics, travel, healthcare, entertainment and more which we got our hands on. Bear in mind that this data is relatively old, with some of the research going back as far as March 2005. Nevertheless, it’s a fascinating look at how Google looks at its own core business and how it apparently uses the information weeded out by research agencies to better market AdWords and related services to the verticals cited above. Below is a screenshot of a graph used in an internal Google presentation, showing survey data collected by Global Market Insite and Media Screen. The research agencies had conducted 300 web-based interviews with consumers that use the Web to research and/or purchase telecom services. In this case, they demonstrated that portals and retail shopping sites were rarely visited first by the surveyed persons when going online to research telecommunication services. 64% went to a search engine first, double the amount of people who answered that they’d visit the website of a telecom service provider before anything else. The second chart lifted from the docs reveals the agencies also found that more than 70% of all survey respondents preferred Google for their product searching needs over other engines. For the Beauty vertical, the survey also yielded some insightful data on which other influential information sources respondents indicated as important to them when purchasing beauty products on the Web. Topping the list were Print (49%) and TV (46%), closely followed by search engines searches and POS displays in stores (both 43%). Sponsored links in search results was surprisingly low in the list, with 12% of respondents saying it’s an important resource for them when buying skin care products, fragrances etc. Google also researched why people use search engines, in this case with regards to people who browse the Web in search for health-related information. The results are likely similar for most major search engines, but what I found noteworthy – considering the topic of health – is that these persons definitely don’t use search engines primarily because they consider them to be trustworthy or sources for objective information. Here are some embeds of full documents, namely research conducted on the B2B tech, entertainment and travel verticals. The Role of Search in the Business Technology Purchase Process – Use of Online for Entertainment Products & Information – Use of Online for Travel Information and Purchasing – 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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