Tuesday, May 3, 2011

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Facebook's Social Widgetization Of The Web, In A Sweet, Sweet Infographic Top
On April 21st, Facebook celebrated the 1st birthday of its now ubiquitous “Like” button, and promptly shared the news that 10,000 sites are, like, using the plugin every day. The social networking behemoth then continued its parade of social widgets last week , giving the Like button a new partner in crime with the “Send” button, which allows users to directly share content with their Facebook Groups, Facebook friends, or any standard email address. And gives site designers yet another widget to integrate into their code. Huzzah! With the “Send” button, Facebook seems to be continuing its quest to eventually replace email with some sort of Facebook-related social service. The button is already available on over 50 sites including The Washington Post, last.fm, 1-800 Flowers, Gilt Groupe, The Huffington Post and Orbitz. With more to come, I’m sure. So, to commemorate Facebook becoming the Big Brother of social widgets, JESS3 , a creative interactive agency specializing in UX and data visualization, has created a nifty retrospective — timeline of Facebook’s social widgets, beginning with the launch of Facebook Connect back in 2008. Warning: Infographics ahead. Oh, and by the way, you should totally “Like” us on Facebook. Sorry, I had to. CrunchBase Information Facebook JESS3 Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Google's Chrome Team Lends Their Support To The It Gets Better Project With A New Video Top
A few weeks ago, a video entered wide circulation in the tech press for two reasons: 1) it featured lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Apple employees talking about their difficulties growing up. And 2) it was very, very well made. But the truth is that the It Gets Better Project has been around since last September, when columnist and author Dan Savage kicked things off with his own YouTube video with his partner to talk about their experiences. The Apple video simply reinvigorated the project in our circles, helping to keep the message going. And now Google is doing their part to continue the message as well. Yesterday the Chrome team uploaded a new, great It Gets Better video . Watch it above. Google has actually participated in this project before. In October, several Google employees were featured in a video . This was immediately followed by President Obama creating a video as well. There are now thousands of these videos. Great, great stuff. CrunchBase Information Google Chrome Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Developers, The Rap (Featuring Steve Ballmer, Naturally) Top
One upon a time, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer interrupted a speech at a developer’s conference with a chant that would set the Internet ablaze. “Developers, developers, developers, developers” was quickly put on the web and just as quickly mixed, remixed , and placed on the mantle of pure Internet gold. But to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever crafted an actual song around it. Until now. Mobile developer Cory Smith shot us an email today pointing us to a song he wrote and recorded. “I'm contrasting developing music and developing software in a hardcore rap kinda way, pretty entertaining,” he notes in his post . “The Steve Ballmer sample is the icing on the cake,” he notes in his message to us. Indeed. Listen to the song below. It’s awesome. And below that, find Smith’s lyrics. If Microsoft is smart, they’ll use this to kick of Ballmer’s next speech much like Apple used an awesome song we posted to kick off the Antennagate presser. After all, the talk is that Microsoft is putting a heavy focus back on developers . The song is perfect. Smixx - Developers (feat. Steve Ballmer) by Smixx I'm a developer in many senses of the word cause I make these applications but I also use these verbs to make this music I construct it line by line just like when I'm coding another software design in both cases its about design patterns anyone can get the job done its the execution that matters I have many interests sometimes they conflict my creativity can usually be a benefit but sometimes it keeps me far too busy but I can't complain because my life is hardly gritty so I think i'll sit back and pen myself another ditty why is it that Linus Torvalds the only one that Gits me did you get that reference I was using or is the thought of source source control too confusing may just lay myself down a Team Foundation so I can test the objects of my creation Chorus (Steve Ballmer) Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers not a fan of jewelry except for Ruby on Rails I can use my skills to increase my online sales capitalize on the popularity of Facebook or grill up some beats so they declare me a great cook never really been a big fan of insects so I track down bugs remove them when in test make sure they never get pushed to production but sometimes deadlines decide they get rushed in I'm the same way when it comes to my songs perfection is the goal whenever the mic is on I don't want a bad verse to slip in the mix cause it could look really bad for Cory or smixx only a fan of your behaviour if its driven development theres no sense of adding features for the hell of it complexity is irrelevant whether its with music or software your users have stories so you should be telling them Chorus (Steve Ballmer) Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers Developers seeing my creations on others devices after years of concentration is nothing but priceless whether its with software or a song just like this I put myself out there so go on and hype this Running 3 external monitors off of my macbook currently reviewer on a Windows Phone Pact book now I got Steve Ballmer and he's bombing on this tracks hook of course my QA's on me cause this app just crashed look when I write my raps never use a marker constantly refactor like I'm using Resharper doing ad hoc deploys and I'm always deliverin' and I made that choice regardless of dividends creating all this noise in some form until the bitter end stating with with my voice theres no norm that I can fit within haven't been sleeping but using lots of REST pass the mic back to who rocked it best CrunchBase Information Microsoft Steve Ballmer Information provided by CrunchBase
 
COLOURlovers Raises $1 Million To Make Everyone An Artist Top
If you have even the slightest hint of a creative streak, you may be interested in COLOURlovers , a startup whose products let you easily express yourself using shapes and colors, even if you aren’t particularly good at it. The Y Combinator-backed company has built up a community around creating color palettes, a matching iPhone app , and even a tool for sprucing up your Twitter profile. And now the company has closed its first seed round. COLOURlovers has raised $1 million from investors including Atlas Venture, Morado Ventures, Founder Collective, Charles River Ventures, 500 Startups, Seraph Group & Zelkova Ventures, Matt Mullenweg, Alexis Ohanian, Don Hutchison, Dharmesh Shah, Jared Friedman, and Shawn Bercuson (the startup says it got in touch with many of them via Angel List). Founder Darius A Monsef IV (aka Bubs) didn’t want to talk too much about the company’s future plans, but he did say that it would soon be releasing a more robust version of its vector shapes editor, Seamless . Seamless has been available as a web app until now, but the company will be selling what he describes as an advanced desktop version within the next few weeks. As for the company’s long term goals, he says they’re working “towards a much bigger vision that builds upon all of the great creative content our community has been generating.” The company’s team now consists of three founders and two recently-hired full-time employees, with plans to hire an additional seven in the near future (if you’re interested they’re targeting hires in Portland — Monsef describes the hiring market in San Francisco as “pretty nutty”. The company was actually already profitable prior to the seed round, and on track to do over $500k in revenue this year. Monsef says that Seamless has been used to create 65,000 patterns thus far, and that 1.5 million color variations have been created as well (users can re-color existing patterns to suit their taste). The Twitter profile designer, which is called Themeleon, is used to design 600,000 profiles per month — and that number will grow once the company launches its upcoming WordPress version and a Themeleon API. CrunchBase Information COLOURlovers Information provided by CrunchBase
 
P2P Learning Startup Skillshare Gets $550,000 From Founder Collective and SV Angel Top
Peer-to-peer education startup Skillshare , which just launched in April, raised a $550,000 angel round, according to an SEC filing . Investors in the New York City startup include Founder Collective, SV Angel, Collaborative Fund, David Tisch, and Scott Heiferman. Skillshare is a community where people can offer classes to other members. People sign up online, and meet in person for real classes for everything from how to bake cupcakes to how to get startup funding. People can charge for the classes and Skillshare takes a 15 percent cut. Co-founder Michael Karnjanaprakorn used to be head of product at Hot Potato (since acquired by Facebook), and co-founder Malcolm Ong was the product manager at OMGPOP. The site is focussing on classes about tech startups, food and drink, and arts & crafts to start out. Our business model is similar to Eventbrite. For instance, Chris Dixon of Founder Collective is going to teach a class on How To Raise Your First Round for $15 (with proceeds going to charity). The founders are curating the classes to start out in order to attract the right kind of people and define the culture of the site. They are getting some advice from fellow New York startups. “The guys at Kickstarter have given a lot of advice on how to build our community, especially in the early days of the startup,” says Karnjanaprakorn. “Right now, we don’t allow private one-on-one classes, tutoring sessions, or test preparation services. While we think these classes are great, they don’t really fit into our community as we’re going after the ‘creative, unique, interesting and skill-based’ classes.” The goal of Skillshare is to make education relevant and more current to what people need to learn. “While it's great to learn multi-variable calculus or the economics of China during school,,” says Karnjanaprakorn. “What about the other 99% of skills that will never see the light of day? By the time a college starts teaching "Mastery in Online Community Management", it will become so outdated and irrelevant. Traditional education will never catch up to the skills needed in the market today.” CrunchBase Information Skillshare Founder Collective SV Angel Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Google Dissolves Search Group Internally, Now Called "Knowledge" Top
Google has seven major product groups. Advertising, Commerce & Local, Mobile (Android), Social, Chrome, YouTube and Search. Search is, of course, Google’s first and most important product. But that group actually no longer exists internally. As of April, when Larry Page took over as CEO of the company, the search group was renamed the “knowledge group” internally. Google confirms the change. And, they point out, it was actually publicly announced in an SEC filing made on April 11. Nobody seems to have noticed that someone was named the SVP of a Google product group that previously hadn’t existed. Why the change? That’s a longer story. Leadership of Google search, like most other Google products, was previously split between Marissa Mayer as product lead and Udi Manber as engineering lead. Late last year Mayer moved over to run Local. Alan Eustace now runs the group, and Manber reports to him. There’s a single leader of the group, and he reports to Page. Page, say our sources, has for a long while been thinking of search as much more than Google’s original mission to “organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” His goal is about more than organizing that information, though. It’s also about enhancing people’s understanding and facilitating the creation of knowledge. The problem is, “search” still means “search.” And as Google has expanded that product over the years, first bringing in results from Google’s vertical search engines via Universal Search in 2007, and later via Google Squared , which structures information on the Internet. And there have been other experiments as well. Google Base , for example, as well as Google Knol . In fact, look back at this 2007 Google blog post about Knol, where Manber says “The challenge posed to us by Larry, Sergey and Eric was to find a way to help people share their knowledge. This is our main goal.” These product efforts have generally been led by Manber in the past. And they remain in the search/knowledge group today. Here’s how Google currently views the group. Remember that previously they split it up between Mayer (product) and Manber (engineering). But today Eustace is the overall lead. Manber reports to Eustace and focuses on finding ways to improve the knowledge out there and to encourage more high quality content creation, whether it’s on Google’s servers (Knol) or not. Amit Singhal , Manber’s peer, focuses on the more traditional goals of search, such as the recent algorithm changes called Panda targeting content farms. One way of thinking of this, says a source with knowledge of the group, is this. Singhal does the weeding (removing and pushing down low quality content in search), and Manber is focused on the seeding (encouraging “good stuff” to grow). This isn’t supposed to be information that helps outsiders understand how Google operates, which is probably why Google made the SEC statement in as few words as possible and didn’t publicize it at all. Instead, it’s to make sure that the team inside Google understands that they aren’t just working on search. It’s not just about organization, it’s about enhancement of knowledge. Other than confirming the creation of the Knowledge group to supplant the Search group, Google won’t comment on the personnel changes or the subtle shifts in strategy. For now, says one source, all Google wants to do is align everyone internally. When, and if, Google talks about this more publicly is a mystery. CrunchBase Information Google Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Responsibly Matches Your Gifting With A Donation To Education Top
Just in time for Mother’s Day, co-founders Antoine Grant and Stuart Felkner are launching responsibly , a gift giving platform with a social good component. responsibly (yes, small “r”) is basically a daily deals site that lets you donate 100% of an item’s purchase price to US public schools in need of project supplies and funds. responsibly allows you to choose the specific education project you’d like to donate to, and 50% of the original proceeds of every gift purchased will go to the school, matched by another 50% of corporate sponsorship via Donor’s Choose . The responsibly website integrates with Facebook, and you can send a message announcing the gift to the reciever via Facebook or through email. Right now both its inventory and its project offerings are sparse (currently you can only gift aromatic Stone Candles) but the co-founders are working on building up a queue during the beta. "The education system is in dire need of our help, and we want to start a movement that spreads awareness, brings people on board with our mission and gives them a really easy way to help directly and contribute to saving America's  education," said Grant on the motivation behind the startup’s for profit mission (they take a cut of sales). The co-founders are committed to the cause, and actually turned an old school bus into a home office, outfitting it with solar panels and makeshift beds in order to take a 15 city tour all around the US in April. The responsibly tour visited schools and leaders from the KIPP, Greendot, Teach for America programs across America, getting a better idea of the issues faced by US educators in order to figure out the best way responsibly could help (watch the video above for an in-depth on-the-bus interview). The bus’ return home to LA coincides with the company’s beta launch. "Our goal is to be more than a simple commerce platform – we want to connect consumers and companies with charitable giving in an easy and cost-effective way that benefits everyone," said Felkner. Interested TechCrunch readers can join the beta here. CrunchBase Information Responsibly Information provided by CrunchBase
 
EA Acquires Australian Mobile And Online Games Developer Firemint Top
Electronic Arts (EA) has acquired Firemint , a privately held mobile development studio based in Melbourne, Australia. Firemint is the 60-people strong company behind games like Flight Control (see video below) and Real Racing . EA says the deal is not material to the company, overall. Terms of the acquisition, which is expected to close within four weeks, were not disclosed. Firemint was founded in 1999 (as "ndWare") by CEO Robert Murray, and will now become part of EA Interactive (EAi), a division of Electronic Arts focused on digital business that includes EA Mobile, Pogo and social gaming outfits like Playfish . The deal follows in the footsteps of EA’s purchase of Mobile Post Production , a specialist in cross-platform development and porting of games for smartphones. EA also recently bought Angry Birds publisher Chillingo for $20 million in cash . CrunchBase Information Firemint Electronic Arts Information provided by CrunchBase
 

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