The latest from TechCrunch
- Too Lazy Or Busy To Read? Topicmarks Summarizes Long Texts For You
- The Latest Verizon iPhone Commercial Strikes At AT&T: "Yes, I Can Hear You Now."
- Google Unveils Chrome 9 And Credits Reddit For Their Help Fixing It
- CarWoo Launches CarWoo Version 2 To Keep Car Buyers Even More Informed
- @KennethCole Sets New Bar For Social Media Stupidity [Update: And Removes Tweet]
| Too Lazy Or Busy To Read? Topicmarks Summarizes Long Texts For You | Top |
| Ever come across a lengthy Malcolm Gladwell New Yorker essay that all your unemployed friends will probably be talking about later, but you simply don’t have time in between tweeting working to read? Well Founder Showcase winner Topicmarks was made for the case of Gladwell and even denser documents like research papers and legal texts, breaking them down into digestible pieces when all that you really need to read is an executive summary. Using semantic text extraction and personalization technologies, Topicmarks extracts text from the .pdf, .doc, .html and .txt documents that you upload, copy/paste, email in or enter the URL of. The service then gives you the option to view the “Overview,”"Facts,”"Summary”"Keywords” of the document as well as “Properties” where you can see the original source. You can also interact with the “Overview” in a multitude of ways, including searching by key word and adding more or less text to the summary as needed. Topicmarks is like a more-fleshed out TL;DR, with an “an enormous breadth of possible applications across various use cases and verticals” says co-founder Roland Siebelink. It has the same aspirations as enterprise solutions Autonomy and OpenText but available for free to consumers within a certain usage amount. When given the criticism that the Topicmarks.com site sure had a lot of text on it for a service that summarized text (specifically, “Maybe you should run Topicmarks through Topicmarks?” ) Siebelink told me, “Up to now the site has been geared particularly towards power users who understand how the technology works, now we’re focused on polishing the interface for the general audience who does not want to know how it works.” Ambitiously, Roland says his future plans are to make the summarization technology readily available across all devices, “wherever people read digital information.” Topicmarks is currently raising a 500K seed round. CrunchBase Information Topicmarks Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| The Latest Verizon iPhone Commercial Strikes At AT&T: "Yes, I Can Hear You Now." | Top |
| We’ve made note of both the first Verizon-made iPhone commercial and then the first Apple-made Verizon iPhone commercial . Both are effective and interesting in different ways. But neither takes a shot at AT&T. But a new Verizon one that has just started airing on television, does. At least, indirectly. The new commercial, which we’ve embedded below compliments of quick-with-the-TiVo TechCrunch reader Kacy Fortner , has a very different tone than the initial “clocks” Verizon commercial. In this one, there is triumphant music playing as glimpses of the iPhone 4 are shown. It almost seems as if it’s meant to conjure up Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey . The voice-over begins: “It’s beautiful.” “It’s intelligent.” “Ingenious.” Then the music speeds up. “But does your network, work?” A call comes in. And the person answering the call is revealed. It’s the Verizon guy! “Yes. I can hear you now.” Boom! Then we get the typical message of Verizon’s network being the “largest and most reliable”. Very nice. Wonder if Apple was hesitant at all to sign off on it? Or maybe they just prefer not to know as their two partners about about to enter an escalated war of words with one another. For what it’s worth, I agree with the commercial . Update : Verizon has just posted a higher-res version so I’ve included it below. CrunchBase Information Verizon AT&T iPhone 4 Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Google Unveils Chrome 9 And Credits Reddit For Their Help Fixing It | Top |
| Google has made a big deal recently about not making a big deal about the version numbers of Chrome. “It’s just a number” is the basic take these days. In fact, they can barely be even bothered to announce them at all sometimes. But today, they did actually take some time to acknowledge the latest version — and a funny partner who made it all possible. Google has officially rolled out Chrome 9, meaning the stable version of the browser has been updated to that iteration. They don’t make any mention of the number in the blog post about the update, but trust me, it’s version 9. Instead, Google focuses on the three new major features available to all in this build: WebGL, Chrome Instant, and the Chrome Web Store. Many users will already be familiar with all of those as they’ve been on the beta builds of Chrome for a while, and the dev builds longer before that. But still, each is worth noting as all three are now a pretty integral part of the Chrome experience. WebGL brings hardware-accelerated 3D graphics support. Chrome Instant brings Google Instant support to the Omnibox. And the Chrome Web Store is part of Google plans to push web apps farther. But the more humorous part of the release comes from the Google Chrome Releases blog post . This post details the bug fixes that have come in Chrome 9. And in it, Google gives a special shout-out to the Reddit community for pointing out one critical bug. As Google notes: Special thanks to the Reddit community, for playing so much of the game "Z-Type" that they uncovered a Chromium audio bug — see below! Below, they detail the bug: [ 69195 ] Critical Race condition in audio handling. Credit to the gamers of Reddit! So there you go, while it wasn’t an “ elite ” bug or even a “ l33t ” one, it’s fun to see Google given credit to another service for pointing out their flaws. CrunchBase Information Google Chrome Reddit Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| CarWoo Launches CarWoo Version 2 To Keep Car Buyers Even More Informed | Top |
| YC-funded CarWoo is announcing its Version 2 launch today. In the same space as TrueCar , CarWoo is a reverse auction marketplace for cars i.e. it makes car dealers bid for your business and focuses on covering all aspects of car buying transactions up to purchase. In the true spirit of a marketplace, Carwoo saves consumers an average of $3763 off the sticker price by making dealers compete against each other. Says co-founder Tommy McClung , “There’s thousands of different things you have to think about when you’re buying, and our plan is to make that process as easy as possible from start to finish.” . In the traditional car buying process a consumer would have multiple dealers, doing what CarWoo does on their own. New features in CarWoo Version 2 include the ability to see offers from dealers on leases instead of just purchases and a name your own price feature on dealer offers, allowing even more of the functionality of an in real life dealer relationship from your computer. Buyers can also now engage with dealers across brands when trying to decide between a BMW and an Audi for example. Along with sale price, CarWoo customers will also be able to get “out the door price” estimates, i.e. prices that include taxes, license, registration which can add up to several thousands of dollars on top of the price you have to pay. In addition, Carwoo 2 will include an e-bay like dealer reputation and ratings system, where buyers can rate their experience with a given dealer as a warning to future buyers. CarWoo founder Tommy McClung says that in fact 53% of the time buyers don’t choose the lowest deal because into account the dealer’s reputation. CarWoo is also announcing two new partnerships, the first with autoguide Driverside and the second with autobuying guide Nadaguides , which offers car buying information to consumers. CarWoo is currently working with over 5000 dealers nationwide. Carwoo has $6 million in funding from Y Combinator, Interwest, and notable angels like Paul Buchheit, Joshua Schachter and Aydin Senkut. In order to celebrate the release of CarWoo Version 2, CarWoo will be making their $19 basic plan free (which guarantees that 2-3 dealers will bid for your purchase) for the month of February. CrunchBase Information Y Combinator CarWoo! Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| @KennethCole Sets New Bar For Social Media Stupidity [Update: And Removes Tweet] | Top |
| “We had hoped this ad would change the world but we blue it.” - Kenneth Cole Finally someone sees the unrest in Egypt for the marketing opportunity it truly is! I’ve now spent a couple hours reeling from how insensitive it was for designer Kenneth Cole to use #Cairo to publicize the availability of his spring collection online when Egypt is erupting in violence and millions were cut off from Internet communication for days. My first thought here was, uh oh, some PR person is getting fired for this, the most egregious case of hashtag surfing fail I’ve ever seen. But apparently the tweet came from Cole himself, signed “-KC.” Married to former NY Governor Mario Cuomo’s daughter Maria, Kenneth Cole feels entitled to publish consistently superfical ads that dabble in politics, most notably one that equated abortion to purses, “Dear pro-life advocates, Isn’t it a woman’s right to choose? After all, she’s the one carrying it.” Econsultancy points out that furniture maker Habitat pulled a similar move when it hopped on the hashtags #Iran and #Mousavi in order to blatantly advertise its website during the Iran election protests. It ended up firing the intern responsible and deleting the account. What did Kenneth Cole do? He sent out this pithy apology tweet. @KennethCole Kenneth Cole Re Egypt tweet: we weren't intending to make light of a serious situation. We understand the sensitivity of this historic moment -KC about 10 hours ago via Twitter for BlackBerry® Retweet Reply “We weren’t intending to make light of a serious situation.” Bullshit. Yes, yes you were. That’s exactly what you were doing. As of yet the media fiasco, estimated 1500 negative retweets an hour and an @KennethColePR spoof account haven’t affected the company’s stock price. But trust me they will. They will. Update: Kenneth Cole has deleted the original tweet, offering this apology on his Facebook page, in essence admitting that maybe it was too soon for Egypt jokes. “I apologize to everyone who was offended by my insensitive tweet about the situation in Egypt. I've dedicated my life to raising awareness about serious social issues, and in hindsight my attempt at humor regarding a nation liberating themselves against oppression was poorly timed and absolutely inappropriate.” @KennethColePR Rolling through Germany? Gestapo by our new Berlin store! #KennethColeTweets about 6 hours ago via web Retweet Reply @arrington Michael Arrington @ KennethCole I look forward to slavery and holocaust jokes next. about 7 hours ago via web Retweet Reply @hblodget Henry Blodget Hey, @ kennethcole , who's the idiot who sent this tweet? Has he/she been fired yet? http://read.bi/hdMVmj about 9 hours ago via TweetDeck Retweet Reply @alexia Alexia Tsotsis Okay Internet, who do we hate more, Kenneth Cole or Mubarak? about 6 hours ago via Twitter for Mac Retweet Reply @NathanWurtzel Nathan Wurtzel Hey, if you're planning a murder spree, look good doing so in @ KennethCole 's new spring collection! about 6 hours ago via TweetDeck Retweet Reply @gaberivera Gabe Rivera Sadly, outrage over @ KennethCole is mostly played out. Any other angles to take? E.g. http://read.bi/fwuxAI Or maybe: Anti-outrage backlash? about 6 hours ago via web | |
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