Tuesday, November 3, 2009

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Dual-Screen OLPC Design Binned; Get Ready For The OLPC Tablet Top
The One Laptop Per Child project has seen mixed success. With competition from similar, but more familiar-looking items from Intel and others , the OLPC found itself suddenly competing in a market it had no intention of entering. But they're out there, they've had some serious orders , and despite some other speed bumps , has certainly lent a hand in increasing computer literacy in the developing world. You may remember that the sequel to the XO laptop, as the OLPC hardware was actually called, was spied at Davos in January after its initial debut in May of 2008. It was noted at the time that there was some doubt as to whether it would be made, and now those doubts have come to glorious anti-fruition. The XO-2 is dead — but only because Negroponte decided it should be a tablet.
 
SwingVine Adds Real-Time Functionality To Trend Discovery Platform Top
SwingVine, a site that lets you see what content is trending on the web, is adding real-time functionality. SwingVine aggregates data and news from across the web, analyzes the volume of online buzz and the reputation of various sources, evaluates user interactions on the site itself, and other information to surface the the most popular and noteworthy content on the web. It's a hybrid of an aggregator of information on pop culture and news and an analytics site that actually measures what people are looking for on the web. Adding the ability to see trends and buzz on the web in real-time makes complete sense for SwingVine. The startup determines trends based on factors such as volume, recency, and growth rate of web news, sales data, critic reviews, onsite pageviews, clicks, and other data points around topics. Swingvine is also launching a Facebook app to mine and aggregate trends from your existing Facebook friends, incorporating social results into your trends. You can connect SwngVine with Facebook via Facebook Connect. So when users sign in, social trends are added based on the number of friends who engaged with various topics, the type of engagement (like vs comment vs share etc.), and the recency of engagement. Social trends can be separated from web trends. And unsurprisingly, when topics are popular in both a social circle and on the broader web, they are ranked higher. As we’ve written in the past, content on SwingVine spreads over a number of verticals including music, movies, technology, gadgets, fashion and more. ou can also rate and comment on the item, and share your comment on Facebook, Digg or MySpace. The site’s purpose is noble— with so much content emerging on the web, from music to movies to news and tech gadgets, there is a need for a tool to help people know what's worth reading into. SwingVine competes with other small yet well-funded niche social search engines like OneRiot and Blekko, that also offer users a way to see the chatter, and make sense of trends, on the web. And of course, Google Trends and Twitter’s trending topics sites like Topsy (which just launched new features today) TweetMeme also serve a similar purpose as SwingVine. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
MySpace Says Zero Tolerance For App Scams, Changes Terms Of Use Top
The industry is definitely making big changes to self regulate around social gaming offer scams ( complete background here, with updates ). Zynga, the largest social gaming company and the worst offender when it comes to scams, said yesterday that they will take steps to remove scams from games . They were quickly followed by RockYou . Today MySpace is making a big move itself. They are instituting a “zero tolerance for app scams” policy, says CEO Owen Van Natta , and are amending their apps developer terms of use to further restrict the types of offers than can be presented to users. The existing terms of use already prohibit many types of scams and require clear and accurate descriptions of offers. But as we’ve shown in previous posts, sometimes a clear and accurate description hidden at the bottom of a page in 8 point type isn’t all that useful. The addition MySpace is adding a requirement to have users opt in to any specific offer or promotion that includes a renewal or subscription. Today, we're adding a fifth principle that clarifies a specific use case that we feel is particularly damaging to the user experience: promotions that include hidden renewals without specific opt-in will not be permitted. Because it's our belief opt-out offers are misleading and do not have the best interests of the users in mind, we will be updating our Terms of Use this week to better clarify this for users and developers. Rules are great, but without enforcement the scammy offers never go away (this is the Facebook problem). MySpace says they will enforce these rules and will remove applications that don’t modify practices promptly: Principles and policies are nothing without action and we will continue to enforce our Terms of Use to put our users first. If we find or are notified of violations of our Terms of Use we will contact the application developer and require that they modify their practices and adhere to our Terms. If we do not receive a prompt and appropriate response we will, as we have in the past, remove the offending application from the MySpace platform. The proof is in the pudding, of course. But this is yet another big company stepping up to try to put a stop to social gaming application scams. It’s time for Facebook to make their move. Here’s the full blog post: MySpace's Zero Tolerance Policy for App Scams There has been increased discussion recently about how some application developers on the Web's major social platforms are misleading consumers with deceptive practices. It's important that users and developers clearly understand MySpace's policies and approach to these activities. The MySpace Apps Terms of Use clearly state that we prohibit any deceptive, misleading, and unfair activity through developer applications on MySpace. The Terms of Use require developers to provide accurate information to users and comply with specific rules around what information is being collected, payment terms, and promotional offers. They also prohibit spam and other malicious use. Our Terms of Use were drafted with the following four principles in mind: 1. All MySpace users are entitled to a safe, scam-free application experience. 2. All offers to MySpace users must have a clear and accurate description which is not misleading or deceptive to users. 3. All offers to MySpace users must have a clear and conspicuous explanation of cost with no hidden fees. 4. No application is permitted to incentivize a user to provide their personal information in exchange for virtual goods or currency within the application. Today, we're adding a fifth principle that clarifies a specific use case that we feel is particularly damaging to the user experience: promotions that include hidden renewals without specific opt-in will not be permitted. Because it's our belief opt-out offers are misleading and do not have the best interests of the users in mind, we will be updating our Terms of Use this week to better clarify this for users and developers. Principles and policies are nothing without action and we will continue to enforce our Terms of Use to put our users first. If we find or are notified of violations of our Terms of Use we will contact the application developer and require that they modify their practices and adhere to our Terms. If we do not receive a prompt and appropriate response we will, as we have in the past, remove the offending application from the MySpace platform. Developers are our partners and we want to continue our collaborative and meaningful relationship with the development community. Having recently acquired iLike we have access to some of the most successful social application developers with a wealth of knowledge to inform us how we can have a smarter, more thoughtful application strategy. If you have any questions about these policies or principles please reach out to our Partner Relations team at partnerrelations@myspace-inc.com. We appreciate all of the feedback we've received from our users and developers and look forward to more great things to come for the MySpace Application Platform. -Owen Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Nebul.us: A New Way To Visualize And Share How You're Spending Your Time Online Top
Many of us spend hours a day on our browsers surfing the web both at home and from the office, but we don’t really do much with our web history, which could really serve as a goldmine of information. Nebul.us , a startup launching today in private beta, is looking to tap into this data, leveraging it to offer a cloud-based web history, a productivity tool for monitoring how you’re spending your time online, and a social link sharing service. The site is now in private beta, and 500 TechCrunch readers will be able to gain access by using the invite code ‘techcrunch’. Here’s how it works: after installing a browser plugin (the service currently has support for Firefox with IE, Chrome, and Safari on the way), your browser will start monitoring your browsing history and uploading it to the service. Everything is intitally locked down in a private mode — meaning nobody else can see it — unless you visit the site and explicitly decide to share it with your friends. Or, if there are some sites you’d always be comfortable sharing with your friends, you can choose to add it to your ‘Trusted’ list, which means they’ll automatically be shared. The site has a friends system so you can determine who is allowed to following your browser history, or you can choose to share it into a public pool. If there’s a site you never want to have recorded, even in the private mode, you can block it entirely. If you do let something slip by, you can go back and delete it from your history. The site is well done, with a clean UI and some nice graphics. By default, the site will present your recorded browsing history in a donut shape, with each site visited represented by a colored band. The shape and position of these bands is meant to recall a standard clock face — the length and position of a band corresponds to the time you visited a site. Along with your browser history, you can also import your Tweets and songs played on last.fm which are displayed as parallel bands. It’s fun to play around with, but you can also switch into a more standard list view if you’d like. Also worth pointing out: CEO Alex Huf says that everything on the site was built with touch screens in mind, so the site should play nice with whatever tablet devices are on the horizon. Nebul.us seems to have two main uses: it can used as both a social site for sharing content with your friends (and to the public, if you’d like), or as a productivity site for figuring out how you’re spending your time online. In the former case, which pits the site against the likes of Digg and Delicious, Nebul.us users effectively vote on their favorite articles not with sharing buttons, but by voting with their browsers themselves. In the latter case Nebul.us goes against services like RescueTime . It’s nice the Nebul.us has two very different use cases, but I’m concerned it may prove difficult to explain them both to new users who stumble across the site (frankly I was pretty confused at first). Still, Nebul.us is still is fairly early stages so they have plenty of time to figure out how to balance the two. A harder challenge may lie in convincing people to actually share their browser history in the first place: no matter how many security and privacy features Nebul.us offers, putting that data in the cloud is going to be enough to scare off a significant number of potential users. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
 
Twitter Now Officially En Español Top
Last month, Twitter noted that it was seeking volunteers to help translate its service into other languages. Today, the first of those is ready to go, as Twitter has formally unveiled support for the Spanish language. The Twitter Blog has a post about it right now, but co-founder Biz Stone has cheekily written it entirely in Spanish. We’ll go ahead and translate it for you: Earlier this month we invited volunteers to translate into more languages Twitter. Thanks to these enthusiastic volunteers, Twitter is now officially available in Spanish. You can change the language or visit Twitter.com Settings and change the language setting in the option at the bottom right corner. Some [Spanish-speaking users] Pepe Aguilar (@ PepeAguilar), Manu Ginobili (@ manuginobili), Jose Hernandez (@ Astro_Jose), Andreu Buenafuente (@ buenafuente), Juan Fonseca (@ Fonseca) and La Moncloa in Spain (@ desdelamoncloa) had discovered the Twitter value even before we released the translated version. We hope to offer Twitter in Spanish means more people able to access and enjoy this service. Welcome! Spanish joins Japanese as the only languages besides English that Twitter currently supports. But more are coming soon, as Twitter previously noted that they’d like to have the “FIGS” languages. The “S” in there is Spanish with the others being French, Italian, and German. Official support for other languages should undoubtedly help Twitter continue to grow after stalling a bit in recent months. And this Spanish support should also kneecap Meme , Yahoo’s Spanish Twitter clone (which is now also in English ). Twitter also has a new official Spanish account to follow on the service. CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
OneRiot Confirms They're Building Yahoo's Real Time Search Engine Top
An update to our post in late October about OneRiot and Yahoo partnering to build real time search results into Yahoo : OneRiot CEO Kimbal Musk now confirms the relationship. The new search engine will go live tomorrow. In the email, Musk says that OneRiot results will appear in the main Yahoo search results page for certain queries: Today, we are pleased to confirm that OneRiot is working with Yahoo to deliver realtime search results to Yahoo users. We have been working with Yahoo for 18 months, initially as the launch partner for the Y!BOSS platform and now as the provider of realtime search results. Yahoo joins a list of 70+ partners who utilize the OneRiot realtime search API (others include Microsoft and Reed Elsevier). During an initial test phase, OneRiot results will appear on the main Yahoo Search Results Pages (SRPs) for certain queries, complementing Yahoo's usual results. OneRiot has a robust realtime index of the web and orders search results via PulseRank, the company's proprietary ranking algorithm which reflects the current social buzz around any piece of web content. Both Microsoft and Google are in the process of launching their own real time search engines via direct data relationships with Twitter and Facebook. Update: From Yahoo: Real-time search means different things to different people. For Yahoo!, we think of real-time search in terms of providing the most relevant, fresh information to people every time. Yahoo! Search is currently testing a new search shortcut that will include real-time results at the top of the search results page. The shortcut will only appear on certain queries that will be determined by Yahoo. This is a test designed to discover if showing such content is useful to people using Yahoo! Search. Yahoo! is focused on creating the most innovative, easy-to-use and valuable search experience for people, and after this test we will carefully evaluate whether we should integrate such results for everyone using Yahoo! Search. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
DocVerse Turns Microsoft Office Into Google Docs With Collaboration Plug-In Top
Collaboration on editing documents and spreadsheets is becoming a key feature in productivity suites with the emergence of Google Docs, Zoho, Etherpad and others. Even Microsoft is adding collaboration features to Excel in its new version of Office. While Microsoft is adding this limited functionality to its new version of office, DocVerse offers a plug-in for Word, PowerPoint and Excel that lets you collaborate with other users when editing a document. Once downloaded, the DocVerse plug-in will appear on the right-hand sidebar of any Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel file. You can invite other users to collaborate with you, and once all partied have downloaded the plug-in, you can share documents with each other. Whether users are working on a document online or offline, DocVerse will track, manages and sync all changes to merge them into one updated version of the document. You can communicate with other users via an IM feature within the plug-in as well. And DocVerse also allows for documents to be viewed on web. So you can transfer your document to the web, where DocVerse will render a high fidelity version of within it’s platform. You can also add comments from the web, which are synced automatically, enabling collaboration between people with and those without Microsoft Office software installed on their computers. Each DocVerse-edited document will feature an activity stream which is viewable via Microsoft Office, any Web browser, or an RSS stream. DocVerse is priced based upon users and number of documents. For example, the plug-in is $49 per month for 500 documents and up to ten users. Although DocVerse will face competition from Microsoft itself when Office is released with more collaboration features, the plug-in is extremely useful for past versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Founded in 2007 by Microsoft veterans Shan Sinha and Alex DeNeui, DocVerse has raised $1.3 million in seed funding from Baseline Ventures, Harrison Metal Capital, Naval Ravikant and others. The startup also recently made an enterprise play by integrating its plug-in with popular social collaboration platform Jive. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
 
Exclusive: Soluto Raises $6.2M From Bessemer To Make Your PC Run Better Top
Israeli startup Soluto has closed a healthy $6.2 million second round of financing led by Bessemer Venture Partners and joined by Giza Venture Capital . This is on top of the $1.6 million round the company raised a year ago from Proxima , bringing the total amount of capital invested in the company close to $8 million . The company, which is aggressively keeping its operations hidden from the public eye for now, is only willing to describe itself as being in the ‘anti-PC frustration software’ business. Our man in Israel, Roi Carthy , says the company is one of the hottest in Israel at present day, so let’s take a closer look at what they’re building over there. Soluto’s stated objective is to resolve common end-users’ PC frustrations (e.g. sluggishness, application/OS freezes and long boots). Granted, there are literally hundreds of software applications that claim to deal with these issues, including registry cleaners and a plethora of ‘PC performance boosting’ applications but Soluto claims they all miss the point. The startup doesn’t see the crux of the problem in buggy software but in the way applications behave when running alongside each other and the manner in which they interact with the hardware. In its research, Soluto claims to have uncovered the number one cause for slow PCs: the fact that legitimate software is hogging resources with no apparent reason. For example, software that loads at boot and performs indexing could also perform its chore when the machine is idle. Seeing as it does not, the user has to wait—needlessly—for the process to complete, and voilà, frustration. Soluto believes it can tackle the nature of the issues that result in PC frustrations by employing a crowd-sourced approach to ‘map the PC genome’, which is the term the company uses to denominate the collection of data that can be determined about application behavior, processing requirements, hardware and performance. Obviously, the specifics of this modus operandi are hazy at best, so we’ll have to wait for the company to launch something in public beta to see how it stacks up. Along with the round of financing, Soluto is also announcing that Naftali Bennett has been appointed CEO of the fledgling company. Bennett, a well-known entrepreneur in Israel, is the former founder and CEO of Cyota, an anti-fraud company which was acquired by RSA Security in 2005 for $145 million. Bennett joins Soluto’s original co-founders Ishay Green and Tomer Dvir on the management team. Soluto remains in stealth / closed alpha, but intrigued PC users can sign up for the company’s upcoming public beta product right here . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 

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