Monday, November 1, 2010

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Government Agency Ignored Obama Directive When It Handed Microsoft A No-Bid Contract Top
Last week, Google filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior over not considering Google Apps as an option for a productivity suite for its 88,000 employees when the government agency issued a call (otherwise known as an RFQ) for applications. Specifically, the DOI stated upfront in the RFQ that the email solution had to be part of the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite. Google is alleging that this is anti-competitive and that if Google were to submit a proposal, not only would it come in at a much lower price point than a Microsoft contract, but it would meet all of the DOI’s security requirements. The twist in all of this: President Obama issued a statement shortly after he took office that essentially reaffirms Google’s point. In this memo from March 2009, the White House states that “Excessive reliance by executive agencies on sole-source contracts (or contracts with a limited number of sources) and cost-reimbursement contracts creates a risk that taxpayer funds will be spent on contracts that are wasteful, inefficient, subject to misuse, or otherwise not well designed to serve the needs of the Federal Government or the interests of the American taxpayer. Reports by agency Inspectors General, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), and other independent reviewing bodies have shown that noncompetitive and cost-reimbursement contracts have been misused, resulting in wasted taxpayer resources, poor contractor performance, and inadequate accountability for results.” Essentially, Obama is saying that contracts that limit sources (i.e. directing that an email solution has to be part of the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite) is not only anti-competitive, but it encourages wasteful spending at the hands of the American taxpayers. The memo does concede that “in certain exigent circumstances, agencies may need to consider whether a competitive process will not accomplish the agency’s mission. In such cases, the agency must ensure that the risks associated with noncompetitive contracts are minimized.” According to the complaint, the DOI said that Google Apps didn’t meet the security needs of the agency. Google contends that it does have a federal government compliant security infrastructure in place, and the decision was based on limiting the scope to Microsoft products. In this case, it looks like the risks associated with this non-competitive contract were not minimized, otherwise Google would not have filed an arbitrary lawsuit. New York City also i ssued a non-competitive search for a productivity suite when it signed city’s employees up for Microsoft’s suite a few weeks ago. We’ve contacted Google for comment and will update when we hear back. CrunchBase Information Google Information provided by CrunchBase
 
After A Four Day Freeze, Apple's US App Store Rankings Begin To Thaw Top
The past few days haven’t been too great for anyone who decided to launch an iPhone app right before Halloween. Why? Because no matter how many thousands of downloads their fresh-faced app might have received, it wasn’t going anywhere near the oh-so-coveted US Top 10 list. For reasons unclear right now, the rankings system for the US App Store has been locked in stone for the past four days. Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>
 
LinkedIn Brings Products, Recommendations And More To Company Pages Top
In addition to adding more functionality to user profile pages, professional social network LinkedIn has been beefing up its Company Profiles on the network, allowing businesses to add a follow option , and include a news feed and career information. The idea behind these features is to encourage companies to add more data to their profiles, which can be useful for professionals looking for job opportunities and for recruiters as well. Today, LinkedIn is adding additional curated information to company pages, products, services and the ability to recommend a company or product. On company pages, administrators can add products and services tab. So an accounting business can showcase various financial services the company offers. LinkedIn is taking it one step further to allow companies to tailor lists of products and services, based on member profiles. So a business owner can showcase one set of products (or services) to accountants in the aviation industry and another to engineers in the shipping industry. Companies can also add videos of products and services to their pages and feature particular products more prominently than others. In turn, LinkedIn members can recommend and review a product or service on a company profile, and their recommendations will surface on their own profiles as well. Company pages will list the people who have recommended a particular product as well. Interestingly, it looks like LinkedIn is using the recommendation technology from mSpoke, which LinkedIn acquired earlier this year. LinkedIn is also revealing that a number of well known companies are using the Pages module, including Dell, HP, JetBlue, Microsoft and E*Trade. CrunchBase Information LinkedIn Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Twitter's In-Stream Targeted Tweet Ads Begin Today In HootSuite Top
Twitter is feeling the need. The need to monetize. As such, today the service is going to begin testing in-stream ads through popular third-party client HootSuite, AdAge first reported and Twitter has since confirmed. So what does this mean? Unlike Twitter’s previous experiments with advertising (through their Promoted Suite products), these new ads will be the first that appear in-stream regardless of what a user is doing. Previously, with Promoted Tweets, for example, they showed up pinned to the top of the stream only when a user did a search. This new way of advertising will have tweets from the likes of Virgin, Starbucks, Red Bull and others in a user’s regular stream of tweets. But Twitter says that these tweets will still be based on targeting. What they mean is that you should only see them if you follow people or products on Twitter that are related to the Tweet ad they have to show you. Again, for now, these Tweet ads will only appear to users who are using HootSuite, a client which about a million of Twitter’s 175 million users use. But if this is a success, you can expect this to roll out to other clients shortly. And yes, these ads could appear on Twitter.com one day as well. You may recall that back in May, Twitter started making moves to prohibit third-party ad networks from advertising in Twitter’s stream. By June, this hammer was dropped, which sort of screwed startups like ad.ly — though they adapted . There were a few reasons why Twitter did this, but the most obvious is that they wanted to be the ones to serve up the in-stream ads themselves. And now they’re starting to. Update : Here’s Twitter’s post on the matter. Of note, these are still called Promoted Tweets, they’re just playing around with when and where they’ll show up. Here’s a key blurb: Similar to our Promoted Account recommendations, we use several signals to determine a Promoted Tweet's relevance to a user, including the public list of whom they follow. We will expand the rollout only when we feel we’re delivering a high-quality user experience. CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Logitech Revue With Google TV: The Official TechCrunch Review Top
My family and I have been living with a Google TV for a few days now and since I first installed it, I’ve come up some clever titles for this post. They’ve ranged from snarky to just plain mean, and, well, since I can’t decide on just one, I went with the boring one above. I can’t let all these classy titles go to waste. That wouldn’t be fair, and so, here are some of the nicer ones: Google TV: Welcome to Beta testing Google TV: Like Android 1.0 but on your HDTV Google TV: Feels so good, works so bad Google TV: Because Google only releases beta products Google TV: Twice as many cons as pros Google TV: Because managing unstable applications on your TV is good family fun Google TV: Where’s my Gmail? Got the idea? Yeah, it’s that rough. I can’t paint you a rosy picture of this beautiful marriage of the Internet and your TV because, well, the magic simply isn’t there. Yet. But I’m here to tell you that if the next TV you buy doesn’t have Google TV – or Google TV-like features – I’ll eat my handsome, stylish hat. Google TV, as it stands, is a product in its beta round even though it’s not labeled as such. It’s not fully-fledged nor does it work particularly well. I resent that Google saw fit to use us as their guinea pigs but, but that’s how Google rolls. Think of this as Android for your TV – version 1.0 is garbage but just wait until you see 2.2. With several major updates and lots of little tweaks, Google TV will be the best product they’ve ever made. As of right now, however, it’s a sad mixture of random functions loosely held together by a fustercluck user interface.
 
Amazon Slashes AWS S3 Prices Up To 19% Top
Looks like Amazon has reduced the storage costs on its popular Amazon Web Services’ “Simple Storage Service” (S3) yet again. As of November 1st, S3 users in the US Standard, EU – Ireland, and APAC – Singapore regions will be paying up to 19% less in overall monthly storage charges. Along with these changes Amazon has also rejiggered its pricing tiers; adding a new tier at 1 Terabyte, and removing the 50-100 Terabyte tier, therefore extending the volume discounts to more users. Amazon, which recently introduced a ‘Free Usage Tier’ for AWS Amazon , is continuing to drive down the developer costs for storing existing data, emphasizing the advantages of using cloud computing versus a fixed hard drive for storage. Here’s a rundown of the new pricing format: You can find further details on AWS S3 pricing here. CrunchBase Information Amazon S3 Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Instant Karma? Rent Twitter's Original Office Top
While the tech scene may be booming in the Bay Area right now when it comes to hiring, the real estate scene is not. But with Zynga about to move into a massive new office and Twitter currently looking for a new bigger space, the former could help the latter. But smaller spaces are still gonna need some help — like a cute website with a hook. South Park is one of the nicest areas in the SoMa region of San Francisco. But even there it can be tough to find new tenants apparently. So the startup  One Block Off The Grid (which we covered earlier this year when they got funding) is looking to sublet their space by  setting up this site touting one major reason why a startup should rent it: it’s Twitter’s original office. Sure, it’s $3,000 a month for 1,000 square feet, it has flexible lease terms, vaulted ceilings, access to high speed internet, and is in the middle of beautiful South Park. But who cares about any of that? This is about karma. This is the office where Twitter started to make the magic happen. Now they’re a service with 175 million users, adding 15 million or so a month. Of course, Twitter fairly quickly moved from this site to a bigger space a block or so away (the space Xobni now inhabits ). And then they moved again into Bebo’s old offices about a year ago — and took over a second floor in that building. Now, as they’ve surpassed 300 employees , they’re on the move again. But you can rent the space where it all began (well, unless you count the old Odeo offices, where Twitter began as a side project). One day, perhaps this place will be featured in Before They Were Stars: Tech Startup Edition. CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase
 

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