The latest from TechCrunch
- Wow, Microsoft And Google Are Punching Each Other In The Face Right In Front Of Us!
- Need To Find The Ladies ASAP? Wheretheladies.at Finally Hits The App Store
- Exclusive: An Early Look At News.me, The New York Times' Answer To The Daily
- LaunchRock, The Most Meta Startup Ever, Builds Viral Launch Pages
| Wow, Microsoft And Google Are Punching Each Other In The Face Right In Front Of Us! | Top |
| By now, you’ve undoubtedly heard the news. Google set up a sting operation (how cool is that?) in an attempt to catch Microsoft red-handed stealing their search results. And according to them, they did just that — and made it known. Microsoft has seemingly both sidestepped and denied the claim — and then has sent accusations back Google’s way. The whole thing is amazing, and to be honest, I’m still trying to parse it all. But you can get the whole gist by reading what’s on Techmeme , starting with Danny Sullivan’s original post on the topic. But what’s most interesting right now is that Google and Microsoft are engaged in a full-on war. Yes, they’ve more or less been at war for many years. But it’s mainly been a quiet war, that takes place behind the scenes and only occasionally includes quick jabs at the other one in public. But now they’re straight-up calling each other liars on Twitter, and their own very popular blogs! After the news and subsequent fight first broke out this morning. Microsoft immediately put up a rebuttal on their Bing blog, entitled: Thoughts on search quality . That article directly addresses Sullivan’s post but doesn’t directly call out Google for much. Then things started to get ugly . This prompted Microsoft communication head, Frank Shaw, to take to Twitter in an attempt to swing Microsoft into the offensive postion. Here were his three key tweets: @fxshaw Frank X. Shaw 1.Don’t be fooled. Google wants to change subject because they’re under investigation in the US and Europe for manipulating search results. about 7 hours ago via Seesmic Desktop Retweet Reply @fxshaw Frank X. Shaw 2. Google collects customer data from Chrome and Android. Pot calling kettle black? http://bit.ly/eLQV70 about 7 hours ago via Seesmic Desktop Retweet Reply @fxshaw Frank X. Shaw 3. Harry Shum very clear http://bit.ly/hYvCIM on 1k plus signals used in ranking algorithm…includes clickstream data. about 7 hours ago via Seesmic Desktop Retweet Reply Google’s Matt Cutts fired back on Twitter: @mattcutts Matt Cutts So far Bing's response seems to be "We don't copy Google's results. Of course we do." http://goo.gl/8VoDJ vs. http://goo.gl/yW4Ia about 4 hours ago via web Retweet Reply Google then decided to escalate things further by using their official blog to very directly call Microsoft out with a post titled: Microsoft's Bing uses Google search results—and denies it . I mean, just think about that for a second. Then, about an hour ago, there was this great exchange on Twitter in response to Dave Winer posting a link to the original story: @davewiner Dave Winer Oooops looks like Google caught Microsoft cheating in search. http://r2.ly/853k about 3 hours ago via web Retweet Reply @fxshaw Frank X. Shaw @ davewiner no they didn't. about 3 hours ago via Seesmic Desktop Retweet Reply @davewiner Dave Winer @ fxshaw The evidence is pretty convincing about 3 hours ago via web Retweet Reply | |
| Need To Find The Ladies ASAP? Wheretheladies.at Finally Hits The App Store | Top |
| Geo-location has come to this: After three weeks in review, Wheretheladies.at , a web app that aggregates Foursquare checkins by the female gender, is now available on the iPhone. The concept OF A BIG COMPASS POINTING YOU IN THE DIRECTION OF LADIES is so unprecedented that Apple actually called co-founder Jeff Hodsdon on his cellphone to ask about the app during the review process. Co-founded by Path's Danny Trinh and Hodsdon, Wheretheladies.at the iPhone app ranks nearby locations by the number of females who have checked in (using a dictionary crawl and permutation logic when gender isn’t available) as well as helpfully points you in the direction of the critical mass of ladies in your vicinity. We previously called this service “evolutionary advantage,” as it is essentially nerds using technology to circumvent Darwinism. The fittest now includes those who have smarts, or at least smartphones. Hodsdon says that the difference between Wheretheladies.at and apps like Assisted Serendipity is temporal. Wheretheladies.at only counts check-ins within the past 30 minutes to ensure that ladies will be there when you arrive, “When it says 10 ladies are at Elbo Room that means in the last ~30min. I think that is key. It’s about where to head to right now.” Right now the app only works in San Francisco, but the team is working on getting it to other cities. When I asked if they would ever build Wheretheguys.at , Hodsdon quickly replied, “I’ll start on that now.” Update: Hodsdon emails me seconds after this post went up, “Oh! I forgot to add! We’re going out tonight to celebrate. Where ever the #1 spot is for ladies is where we will be :) Updates come from @wheretheladies too.” You can find out where they’ll be by downloading the app here. CrunchBase Information wheretheladies.at Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Exclusive: An Early Look At News.me, The New York Times' Answer To The Daily | Top |
| Tomorrow, all eyes will be on the launch of News Corp’s iPad newspaper The Daily , but huddled away in a downtown loft in New York City’s meatpacking district a team from betaworks and the New York Times are busy putting together their answer to what an iPad news app should be. The collaboration will be called News.me , and it won’t look anything like The Daily . I know because I’ve been playing with an early version of the app, which I will describe in detail below along with the first-ever published screenshots of the app (click to enlarge). News.me is a social news reading app that presents the news that the people you follow on Twitter are reading, and filters it based on how many times those stories are shared and clicked on overall. It pulls in data from not only Twitter but also bit.ly , the betaworks company that shortens billions of shared links every month. In contrast, The Daily will produce its own articles and videos with a staff of 100 journalists. It is not clear how many social features will be included in The Daily, but the emphasis seems to be more on the original content. We’ll find out more tomorrow (I’ll be covering the launch). News.me is still a work in progress, and new features are being added every few days. but its basic skeleton is in place. It is more along the lines of Flipboard but with a few new twists. You sign in with your Twitter account, and you can see a stream of news stories and videos being viewed by the people you follow in their Twitter streams. Instead of just seeing the links, the underlying text and images are displayed inline. Not only can you see your own Twitter news stream, but you can also see the Twitter news streams of any other News.me users who you also follow on Twitter. These people should already be familiar to you, but instead of seeing what they are Tweeting out, you get to see the news that is being recommended to them by the people they follow. When you first launch News.me, you see the welcome screen below with a few tutorial hints: Tap on the people along the top dock to see what stories are appearing in their Twitter streams, tap on a story headline or excerpt to read it full screen, or you can stretch a story open inside the stream with a reverse-pinch. This reverse-pinch is one of my favorite parts of the experience. You flick to scroll through the stream, and when you find something you like, you can open it up and read it without loading a new page. Any article can be saved for later, shared via Twitter, Facebook, or email, saved to Instapaper, or viewed in the Safari browser. If you favorite any Tweet with a link on Twitter.com or any Twitter client, that story will also be saved in News.me. By default, your stream is filtered for you so that you only see the stories that hit a certain threshold of activity based on general bit.ly clickthrough data for that story. There is also a Big News button that shows the most important news overall as determined by Bit.ly. The app displays full articles, some of which are licensed from other news organizations. For this reason, the app won’t be free. Instead, it may try to take advantage of whatever subscription options Apple announces tomorrow. I think charging a subscription for what is essentially Web content will be a tough sell. But News.me is pushing the edge of what a social news stream looks like, which I am all for . However, it could do a better job in a few areas. Here are a few feature suggestions I hope they consider before News.me launches to the public. 1. Merge the streams : It’s cool to be able to click on 20 different avatars of people you know from Twitter and see the social news stream through their eyes, but if you are anything like me, the people you follow pretty much all tend to be interested in the same things. The result is that Everyone’s News.me stream is very similar with the same tech news stories popping up in each one. There is an option to mute a story once you’ve read it so that it does not appear again even in other people’s streams. But a better solution is to show a unified stream with a little avatar icon for everyone who is implicitly recommending that story. 2. Show more signals: In addition to showing everyone in whose stream a particular story appears, News.me could also highlight when someone you follow explicitly recommends something by retweeting it or sharing it themselves. Anything that allows readers to tell at a glance which stories are more important than others would be a step forward. 3. Filter by topic : Right now there is only one “Big News” button based on bit.ly data, but that button could be broken up into categories like politics, international, tech, sports, and finance. Show me the best news stories in each category. CrunchBase Information Betaworks New York Times Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| LaunchRock, The Most Meta Startup Ever, Builds Viral Launch Pages | Top |
| In case you needed another “you know there’s a bubble when …” tech post, LaunchRock , a startup that builds viral launch pages for other startups, is launching today via its own product. Inspired by the viral launch pages of Fork.ly and Hipster , the guys behind LaunchRock thought that they could streamline the process of getting users to sign up for startup betas, and built an entire launch page building platform. Co-founder Jameson Detweiler explains that the advantages to system that gives you earlier access to a product as you more friends you invite is that they show you the level of demand and that they build you a list of the most eager candidates. Using this type of page, local Q&A site Hipster brought in over 10K sign ups without mention of what it does. “The invite code model is broken. You can give out 1000 of them, have them dissappear on TechCrunch and only 50 people (or less) actually use the site. With LaunchRock people show that they really want to get in.” Built at Startup Weekend on Saturday, LaunchRock has since received over a 1000 sign ups and is letting 25 people into its beta today, 10 of those TechCrunch readers. Access to LaunchRock provides you with a backend from which to build your launch page, an IP address to set your @ A record to, a unique link to share with your friends, as well as access to LaunchRock analytics services. Already they’ve received interest from heavy hitters such a Boxcar for use in a product unveiling. Says Detweiler, “I launched my last start up ( http://greenkonnect.com ) the wrong way, spent too much time building without know if the audience was there, and by the time we were ready to launch it, we didn’t have anyone to use it, then it was really hard to find people to use it.” TechCrunch readers who sign up on LaunchRock.com and want immediate access can tweet their referral link to @getlaunchrock with the text loop “RockLaunch Rocks Launches!” After the first ten today, LaunchRock will be letting TC readers through in batches of 5 with every roll out. In addition to coming up with ways to keep startups around after launch, LaunchRock is planning a widget so you can use LaunchRock on your own landing page, premium services and a potential affiliate program as a business model. CrunchBase Information LaunchRock Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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