The latest from TechCrunch
- How Random Is Microsoft's Random Browser Choice Screen In Europe?
- RemakingMySpace: Controversial. Bold. Progressive. And Dead.
- The Mysterious Social Search Abyss Of 2010
- iPhone Game House ngmoco Raises $25 Million Series C, Buys Freeverse
- Fotolia Lets You Animate Photos With Flixtime
- Al Gore Joins Richard Branson in Backing GreenRoad
| How Random Is Microsoft's Random Browser Choice Screen In Europe? | Top |
| After a lengthy legal face-off, Microsoft and European antitrust officials recently agreed on the implementation of a so-called ballot screen that will give European Windows users a chance to download rivals’ browsers – including Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Opera – as possible alternatives to Redmond’s own Internet Explorer (see screenshot above or go here ). Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft has agreed to provide a “ballot screen” to most European customers that will offer links to downloads of browsers offered by the company’s fiercest competitors when it comes to the Web browsing space, starting next week. The browser choice screen was designed to give all listed browsers a random order upon each new visit; antitrust regulators saw this as the right path to take to make European consumers more aware of alternative browsers to IE without favoring one over the other. But how random is the presentation of the browser on that ballot screen, really? That’s exactly what the good people behind Slovakian tech news site DSL.sk set out to discover, based on the current implementation and code found on www.browserchoice.eu. Their findings were quite interesting, as they seem to suggest that the selection isn’t really that random as one would imagine, and that Microsoft is not doing itself any favors at all, when in fact it may even be giving Google’s Chrome browser a bit of an edge. It took me some creative Google Translating to figure out how the team got to its conclusion, but finally a Skype chat with one of the reporters at DSL.sk cleared things up for me. The page on www.browserchoice.eu is static, running nothing but Javascript. The guys at DSL.sk basically automatically loaded that page tens of thousands of times, and they kept score of which browsers were shown in which order for each of those instances. And not only did they test this sufficiently on this page, but DSL.sk did the same for the core Javascript algorithm that triggers the random ordering. The test were run using Internet Explorer 8 on a Windows 7 machine, because the ballot screen will pop up in IE for users who install the relevant Windows Update and have set Microsoft’s browser as default. More than once out of every four hits, the page would show Google Chrome on the far left, and Internet Explorer would only make it to the first spot in 13,8% of page loads (scoring well below all four other browsers). In fact, in over 50% of all page hits, Internet Explorer would come out to the far right spot of the five browser choices shown on the screen. Here’s a table with the stats – the titles are in Slovakian but are simply indicating the order of the browser and its average position in the right column: What’s most apparent is that Google Chrome scored ‘best’ out of five for all 3 first spots on the browser choice screen, and that Internet Explorer appeared on the far right way more than rival browsers. We should note that this doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a conspiracy going on – perhaps tens of thousands of hits are simply not enough to produce relevant results, or the results are skewed for a different reason. DSL, for one, claims the test results are quite stable and don’t seem to alter much when the number of loads keeps on increasing. Be that as it may, it’s also worth noting that the ‘first spot’ doesn’t necessarily mean it’s also the ‘best spot’ – eye movement research could well conclude that the middle, far right or any other of the spots is actually the most beneficial one. For what it’s worth, the DSL team says they had to make two minor changes to the code in order to run their tests mimicking the real behavior of the page as closely as possible, so theoretically the results could end up being more random than they appear based on the results cited above when the browser choice screen actually goes live. Also, different browsers produced different results, although it didn’t matter much whether IE6, IE7 or IE8 was used for testing. Tests were also run in Firefox, baring completely different results, although there was never an equal distribution between browsers whatsoever, so even then the ‘randomness’ can be questioned. Do you think the selection on the browser choice screen will end up being completely random, or will more exhaustive research ultimately show that there’s a consistent pattern of browser selection happening here? (Hat tip to Patrik Hornik) CrunchBase Information Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| RemakingMySpace: Controversial. Bold. Progressive. And Dead. | Top |
| In the summer of 2009 MySpace hired Katie Germinder , Facebook’s Director of User Experience and Design, as an SVP. Her primary job was to assemble a “swat team” of leading outside designers and user interface experts and re-imagine MySpace from the ground up. That team was made up of four people – including two former Apple designers and one ex-Facebooker – and worked out of a conference room in MySpace’s San Francisco offices for six months. They were creating a new site, located at remakingmyspace.com, and it was going to launch sometime right about now. RemakingMySpace was going to be a new version of MySpace with every piece of legacy stuff thrown out the door. Users and employees would be solicited for input – to get new ideas and vote on already submitted ones – to rebuild the service brick by brick. Most of the work over the last six months was spent reimagining the design in various ways that would be shown to users, and building tools for the submission and consideration of new ideas. And “users” was broadly defined to include input from artists and bands, advertisers, etc. It was bold, controversial and progressive. And now it’s also very, very dead. Germinder left MySpace last week . And the guy who hired her, former CEO Owen Van Natta , was terminated the week before . So what happened? The project was trouble from the start. Germinder was strongly pushing the project, obviously, and had the support of Van Natta. But she was working outside of Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn’s organization. Hirschhorn hated the idea from the start, say multiple sources, and constantly worked to undermine it. He favored a much more straightforward redesign effort. And, sources say, VP Product Mike Macadaan was also an outsider to the project, and strongly disapproved say of the whole process. None of that mattered as long as Van Natta was CEO and was able to push the project along. But once he was gone and Mike Jones and Hirschhorn took over as co-presidents, remakingmyspace was history. Within a day the team was dissolved and moved back into the product organization. The Apple designers, there as consultants, will likely be leaving shortly as their contracts expire. We’ve spoken with sources on both sides of this. Some say that the the consultants were way too expensive and Hirschhorn and Jones thought the pace of the project was too slow. One source said that almost no work was done at all, and that the team was often absent from the office. But others who knew about the project (the site was live for some MySpace employees) thought it was brilliant, and noted that six months wasn’t all that long for a project of this scope. There was genuine excitement within MySpace over remakingmyspace.com, and some are disgusted that it was all thrown away. One thing that strikes us as odd is the fact that the chief complaints – expense and time – were no longer relevant. The project was effectively done and the expense of it was behind them. “This was killed out of pure vindictiveness,” says one source. Another said that Hirschhorn never even bothered to really understand it, he just wanted it killed. So what comes next? A straightforward redesign that won’t rock the boat, says one source. Another says that many of the ideas from remakingmyspace will eventually make their way into whatever MySpace launches. Officially, all MySpace will say is “The reimagination of MySpace’s user interface is a top priority. Under Jason Hirschhorn, VP of Product Mike Macadaan and his team are leading the charge to redesign the site and create a beautiful new and exciting environment for our users.” We’re now trying to track down and verify screen shots and the new logo for remakingmyspace.com. Stay tuned for updates. CrunchBase Information MySpace Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| The Mysterious Social Search Abyss Of 2010 | Top |
| Google Trends is a great tool to get an overview on terms people are searching for with the largest search engine in the world. It also shows interesting trends. And something is definitely going on with searches for a few large social networks using Google. At some point in mid January, a group of sites including Facebook , YouTube , Twitter , Flickr , and Foursquare saw a huge drop in number of searches for their domains. Now, to be clear, these are only searches for the .com names, for example, “facebook.com” and “youtube.com” and not just the terms “facebook” and “youtube” themselves. Still, across the board, traffic had been rising for these .com domains and then at the same time all dropped off a cliff. One might think this has to do with the China situation (Google warned it might have to pull out of China after saying it would remove previous restraints on searches). But drilling down into the data shows that while the searches from China did take a big fall, they did as well from other countries around the world too. Other sites saw drops as well, but by far these large social sites saw the most pronounced drops that all seem to be aligned. Weirdly, google.com did not see any drop (though I’m not sure who uses Google to google google.com). We’ve reached out to Google for some clarification or insight into this and will update when we hear back. The logical answer would seem to be that they switched something in mid-January that led to these huge drops in social site searches on Google, but who knows. Maybe we have a wild honey bee extinction situation going on here within Google. Update : Google’s own Orkut.com also seeing a drop. As are several popular European social sites like Tuenti.com . [via Mrinal ] CrunchBase Information Google Facebook Foursquare Twitter YouTube Flickr Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| iPhone Game House ngmoco Raises $25 Million Series C, Buys Freeverse | Top |
| Neil Young, the CEO of iPhone game startup ngmoco , wants to “amass enough scale” to accelerate “away from the pack.” He just raised a $25 million series C round and acquired Freeverse , another top iPhone game developer, to help ngmoco keep moving forward. The round was led by Institutional Venture Partners, and existing shareholders Kleiner Perkins, Norwest Venture Parters, and Maples Investments also participated. The new round brings the total raised to $40.6 million. The startup consistently pumps out new iPhone games which have been downloaded millions of times. Two of its games alone— TouchPets and Eliminate —have been installed 9 million times, and hundreds of thousands of people play every day. Last year, ngmoco switched to free-to-play games with in-app purchases for virtual goods through its Plus+ social game network. All of Freeverse’s games, such as Skee-Ball, Flick Fishing, Flick Bowling, and Moto Chaser, are paid apps. Skee-Ball is the No. 4 ranked paid app in the App Store. But Young plans to move the Freeverse games over to the free-to-play model, and then make money off in-app purchases. Young also acquired the $0.99 game Charadium from another game developer and plans to convert that over to free-to-play as well. The model is working well for ngmoco. Young says TouchPets had “its biggest revenue day” last weekend, and its next two games, We Rule and GodFinger (a “social god game”), were designed specifically with the free-to-play model in mind. “On any given day, you have about 2% of your audience paying you money,” he says. He expects ngmoco to put out about about 20 new games this year, and the newly-acquired Freeverse team to nearly match that. In addition to rolling out wave after wave of new iPhone games, Young also plans to open up an SDK to ngmoco’s Plus+ system so that other developers can more easily tap into it. The Plus+ system can manage virtual goods payments, player-to-player messaging, and other social aspects of iPhone games. CrunchBase Information ngmoco Freeverse Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Fotolia Lets You Animate Photos With Flixtime | Top |
| Microstock photography giant Fotolia is launching a new site, called Flixtime, that allows users to create simple video slideshows. Similar to the simplicity of Animoto, Flixtime allows you to produce 60-second videos from your photos easily and quickly. Once you register for a free account, you’ll be upload your own photos or stock photos from Fotolia’s selection of images. You can also upload your own music, or choose from Fotolia’s stock music collection. And you can add text to any slide as well. Once you create a video, you can share the file to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other destinations. You can also choose to download the file to your computer for further editing. Check out the video I created in a matter of minutes here. Flixtime actually offers a considerable amount of stock photography and music to choose from; so it’s easy to make a pretty slideshow combining your own photos and Fotolia’s offerings. The music is powered by AudioMicro, a music startup that helps license stock audio files. In my opinion, Flixtime is a more basic version of Animoto, which has been steadily ramping up its offerings. Fotolia took a massive round of investment last year from TA Associates last year and has been steadily growing its userbase. It reached one million registered users and five million images for sale last February, introduced microstock video in April, hired an iStockPhoto co-founder in May, and launched a royalty-free photo site called PhotoXpress. The site also rolled out an add-in ribbon for Microsoft Word and PowerPoint 2007 that gives users instant access to the company's vast library of images and vectors from within the application. CrunchBase Information Fotolia Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Al Gore Joins Richard Branson in Backing GreenRoad | Top |
| What do a trucker, an Israeli entrepreneur, Al Gore and Richard Branson all have in common? Proof that the real goldmines are old, neglected industries. The name of that proof is GreenRoad . While so many entrepreneurs bang their heads against a Web and social media advertising brick wall, GreenRoad has applied common technology to an industry technology has largely passed by and—voila—they've got a business that's growing and saving lives, money and the environment. Driving is the third most deadly profession after deep sea fishing and working in a coal mine. Not only does driving more safely save lives but research shows it can also save 10% on annual fuel costs, and alleviate a good chunk of the $230 billion professional fleets spend on crashes each year. Enter GreenRoad: a system that helps professional drivers drive more safely and as a result save their company a lot of money. The GreenRoad system looks simple from the outside: There's a two-inch device on the dashboard that starts the day with a green light. If a driver brakes hard, swerves or turns recklessly, the light turns yellow. If the driver continues to drive erratically the light stays yellow. If it gets worse the light turns red. That's it. But like a lot of apparently simple ideas, there’s a lot more going on under the hood. GreenRoad was the brain-child of an Israeli entrepreneur who was run off the road one night by some wild kids. "If only their parents knew how they were driving…" he muttered to himself and the work on the company began. It morphed over the years from a consumer product to one aimed at commercial fleets. While the device is made up from mostly off-the-shelf products like a GPS chip, accelerometer, a CPU, mashed up with Google maps and a dashboard-like management portal, it took a good three years of hardcore R&D to build. While you want the system to work well enough that aggressive driving tactics are caught, avoiding false positives are a must if drivers are to trust GreenRoad and accept its results. The algorithms can crunch more than 120 different driving maneuvers and the map on the dashboard helps provide context, both for the driver, and for a supervisor looking at the results later. For instance, a lot of harsh right turns could be the result of a hairpin turn in the road, not carelessness on the part of the driver. There's also a good deal of psychology worked into the device. Drivers don't want to feel spied on, so video and audio surveillance products haven't been popular. It's also not a good idea to have something distracting, which is why early models that had icons to describe the offending aggressive move were nixed for the three simple lights. The dashboard, too, helps pull natural competitive levers by showing your performance, relative to your peers. And don't underestimate things as simple as starting each day with a green light: The key is holding drivers to a high enough standard, while letting them know they can succeed if they work at it and concentrate as well. GreenRoad has raised less than $40 million to date from Richard Branson's Virgin Green Fund, Balderton Capital in London, Benchmark and DAG Ventures. On Monday the company will be announcing another $10 million from Generation Investment, a fund started by Al Gore and David Blood, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs asset management. Sound like a lot of money? Consider how much the company saves. Fuel savings just from driving less aggressively can save a company some $300 per vehicle per year, and when you factor in crash savings it’s more like $1000 to $4000 in savings per vehicle per year. That makes it a very easy ROI sale for a company's CFO, environmental officer or safety officer. Now consider how much GreenRoad makes . It has 80 customers so far, and more than one of those customers have installed the technology in 20,000 of their cars. The three-year license goes for $1,000 per car, which the fuel savings alone cover. That's right: We're talking about $20 million contracts. And there's more where that came from. GreenRoad Senior VP Eric Weiss says there are 80 million professionally driven cars in the US and the EU. That puts GreenRoad in the middle of a $80 billion market. I haven't seen many companies like these since the good old days of enterprise software. And GreenRoad doesn't have a lot of competition. Weiss himself came from the enterprise software and mobile space. At first he wasn't sure about a tech company in such a weird, forgotten market, but pretty soon he got excited. "There are very few problems left of this size to solve," he says. "Besides, the world doesn't need another gadget for my phone or another ERP company. And he’s right. GreenRoad proves what a lot of smart investors have been saying for a while now— that the best tech deals are no longer in a much picked over "tech sector" per se, but rather in applying technology to old-world industries. | |
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