Wednesday, July 27, 2011

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AdSense For Images Pixazza Rebrands As Luminate, Launches Platform For In-Image Apps Top
Pixazza, a Google Ventures-backed photo tagging service that has been compared to an "AdSense for Images," is rebranding as Luminate today, and debuting a new platform for in-image apps. As we’ve written in the past, Pixazza allows publishers to identify, tag and match products found within online images on their sites and then link them back to the inventories of Pixazza's network of advertisers. The service, which can be integrated in a site by adding a single line of code, allows consumers to browse the photos featured on a site and mouse over it to reveal information and pricing about similar products, and if desired, click to purchase. Through the company’s network of publishers, Pixazza now reaches more than 150 million unique users per month, and is seeing a rate of 30 billion image views per year. Pixazza currently works with over 4,000 publishers, including US Weekly, Hearst Digital Media and Access Hollywood. CEO Bob Lisbonne tells us that the rebanding of the company is an effort to convey that Luminate has a vision of making every image interactive, or luminous. Part of that vision is going beyond e-commerce as an engagement in an app, and providing other interactions within an image. Lisbonne explains to us that just as phones evolved from voice calls to smartphones with apps, images will soon provide more interactions beyond just views. So when a consumer sees the Luminate icon in the corner of an image, it indicates that the image is interactive. Consumers can mouse into the image and choose from a variety of image apps. These could include the ability to share an image or link to Twitter, discover statistics about their favorite athletes, see where to purchase similar products to those featured in a photo, access more information about a particular event, read more content about the people or places featured in an image, listen to music or see a movie trailer related to an image. The company;s applications will span a number of categories including commerce, information, social, organization, advertising, navigation, public service, and presentation. Currently, Luminate's platform offers applications such as Twitter Share, Facebook Share, and Email Share apps that give consumers the power to select what they want inside an image and share it with others; an information app called Annotation that allows publishers to quickly and easily tag any spot within an image and add information relevant to that image; a commerce app called Products, which enables consumers to mouse over the image and interact with tags on the picture; and an Advertising app that offers publishers a way to place relevant advertisements within an image. Luminate plans to roll out an API to developers to create apps for images in the near future. The startup, which has raised nearly $20 million in funding , faces competition from Stipple , Image Space Media, GumGum and others. Crunchbase PIXAZZA Company: PIXAZZA Website: http://www.pixazza.com/ Pixazza allows web publishers to turn their images into links where users can buy whatever is pictured. Learn more
 
iOS 5 To Have Powerful Face Detection Top
After Apple’s purchase of face recognition software provider Polar Rose , we were unsure what Apple had planned. Now, thanks to a little 9to5mac digging we know that face recognition (FaceRec? FaceTimeRec? FaceSnatch?) will be baked deeply into iOS 5 and support a number of clever features including, potentially, the same wacky effects available in Lion’s Photo Booth app. Photo Booth, for example, uses Polar Rose’s technology to add tweeting birds flying around your head and to specifically change your eyes or nose rather than your entire face. This feature has been available with some webcams for a few years on Windows and is only now trickling over to the buttoned-up Mac world. The API supports a call to mouthPosition as well as left and right eye positions. There are no clear examples of these API calls in the OS itself but developers could, for example, use them to make better, more accurate fart apps and to take Talking Tom to dizzying new heights.
 
SAP Now Allows Businesses To Layer Big Data With Google Maps And Earth Top
Business software giant SAP is collaborating with Google to offer an updated software product in its BusinessObjects Explorer, that helps customers manage and layer large data volumes with Google Maps and Earth. The product puts SAP's enterprise analytics on top of the interactive mapping and satellite capabilities in Google Maps and Google Earth and provides customers a way to visualize, analyze and manage "big data" via Google's map, satellite and street-level views. SAP says its Location-based intelligence allows customers to analyze their businesses data in a geospatial context to understand the "where" of their information, as well as global, regional and local trends and how they are impacted by different scenarios. For example, a telecom operator will be able to use Google Earth and SAP software to perform dropped-call analysis and pinpoint the geo-coordinates of faulty towers. Or a state department of revenue will be able to overlay household tax information on a map of the state and group it at the county level to track the highest and lowest tax bases. And U.S. census data can be overlaid on a Google map of the country, grouped by state and drilled down on at the county level. Google also offers companies Google Earth Builder, which allows users to upload, process and store geospatial data in the Google Cloud. But SAP actually allows companies to bring in business analytics and data into Maps and Earth applications. Crunchbase SAP Company: SAP Website: http://www.sap.com Launch Date: 1972 SAP Americas is a subsidiary of SAP AG, the world’s largest business software company and the third-largest software supplier overall. SAP Americas’ corporate headquarters is located in Newtown Square,... Learn more
 
Daily Crunch: Handset Top
Here are some of yesterday’s stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: Canon's X Mark I Mouse Lite Is A Jack Of All Trades Aircounter: Japan Gets Mini Radiation Detector Video: Motorola Triumph Screens Flicker Black And White, Owners Seeing Red Official: Japan To Get The World's First Windows Phone 7 Mango Handset In September Sony Walkman A Series Leaks, Shows The Touchscreen PMP Is Far From Dead
 
BuddyTV Turns Your iPhone Into A Smarter Viewing Guide And Remote Top
A couple weeks ago, I went to a hotel suite in Manhattan to get a demo of BuddyTV’s new iPhone app , which hit the app store a few days ago. In the video above, CTO Bill Baxter takes me through the main features. He shows me on an iPad for easier viewing, but the app is for the iPhone and soon Android. It combines a viewing guide on your iPhone, with social features like chat and being able to broadcast what shows you are watching to Facebook and Twitter. But it also suggests shows for you to watch that are airing now, upcoming, trending, or on your favorites list. The app works with Google TVs , and eventually will be able to act as a remote with tablets and phones that sport an IR transmitter. (With Google TVs and Dish set-top boxes it will work over WiFi). The problem it is trying to solve, says founder Andy Liu is that “70% of the time people are watching sub-optimal content. People turn on TV and end up at Karate Kid 2 .” The BuddyTV mobile app tries to be smart about suggesting what shows to watch. It doesn’t care if the show is on your cable system, Netflix, DVR (if supported) or somewhere else. It lets you “heart” and rate shows and channels, and then it gives you recommendations base don what it thinks you want to watch. Perhaps the best little feature is teh ability to go through your program guide and heart just your favorite channels and then look at only those—a feature I begged Verizon TV honcho Eric Bruno to let me do on FIOS TV, or at least on the FIOS iPad app. The app also pulls in previews, recaps, and other TV trivia from the main BuddyTV site. And you can set reminders for shows you want to watch with notifications on your phone. (Because you need to be reminded to watch TV). Here’s a slicker promo video: Crunchbase BUDDYTV Company: BUDDYTV Website: http://buddytv.com BuddyTV is an online TV guide and discussion center. It provides original articles, news and interviews on a large range of TV content. In addition to content... Learn more
 
Blekko Gets An Infographic Top
Since I am our resident steward of infographics I figured I might as well highlight the creation of the very first Blekko infographic (below), brought to you by our friends over at Cognitive SEO . Related: Am I a huge dork because I can correctly complete this multiple choice “Identify The Blekko Founders!” quiz? Yes, yes I am. *Skulks off to cry* Crunchbase BLEKKO Company: BLEKKO Website: http://www.blekko.com Launch Date: 1/6/2007 Blekko is a search company founded by Rich Skrenta and his core team from previous company Topix and Netscape’s Open Directory. Blekko was founded halfway through 2007 and... Learn more
 
The Good: Chrome Gets OS X Lion Two-Finger Gestures! The Bad: They're Backwards. Top
Considering that it hasn’t even been out a week yet, it shouldn’t be too surprising that many users and developers are still getting used to OS X Lion. This includes Google, makers of the popular Chrome web browser. While we previously noted that a version specifically tailored for Lion was in the works, Google said that it may take a little while. But an update today already brings two key features. First, Chrome 14, which was just released in the Dev channel today , removes window scrollbars by default. This mimics the look and feel of other OS X Lion apps, include Apple’s own Safari web browser. These bars now only show up when you’re actually scrolling a page. The second change is much more welcomed — but also frustrating. Two-finger gestures. Yes, as many Chrome users noticed this past week, Lion broke the ability to flip back and forth between web pages with your fingers. That’s because this was previously done on Chrome in OS X Snow Leopard with three-fingers. But now three-finger swipes default to moving between desktops/apps in Lion. In Safari, this backward/forward navigation is now done with two-finger left/right gestures. But that wasn’t an option in the current version of Chrome out there. Now, in Chrome 14, it’s the new default way to go backwards and forwards. Great, right? Yes, but there’s one big problem. Google implemented it backwards. Well, to be fair, Google implemented it the same way it has always been, just switching three-finger input to two-finger. But as everyone is learning, Lion also reverses directions of gestures. In other words, swiping right in Safari with two fingers now navigates to the previous page (with a nifty page slide out). But in Chrome, you need to swipe left to do the same thing (without the nifty effect). If you use both browsers, this is extremely annoying. In some ways, you can’t fault Google for doing it this way though. Again, this is the way it was, and swiping left to go back makes sense in the context of the way the back button arrow points. But with the visual pull-the-page-back effect you get in Safari, the new way seems to make more sense. Again, you’re now moving the content, not the browsing window. The way to fix this for now is to use software like BetterTouchTool  to customize Chrome’s touch gestures. Eventually, hopefully everyone will get on the same page.
 
Facebook Will Bring Credits To Mobile Browsers Top
Over a month ago, we first reported on Project Spartan , Facebook’s secret plan to bring applications to the mobile web via HTML5. Facebook is working with teams of third-party developers that they call their “Spartans” and hope to unveil the project later this summer. As we noted, the key to all of this is really Credits. Right now, Facebook has no way to make money on any of the mobile platforms out there. With Credits bought and sold through the web browser, they’ll have a way. It’s that simple. That’s why it’s surprising to see Bloomberg report today that “ Facebook May Bring Credits to Mobile Browsers “. Um, of course they will. Not only did we report it last month, in a follow-up story, I included a screenshot of the implementation . I’ve seen it with my own eyes. It’s real. No anonymous sources needed. Either Bloomberg missed that report (to be fair, it was buried in a couple thousands words bashing Facebook PR — more on that in a second) or they weren’t convinced. Either way, I’ll go ahead and include the shot again. This is also odd since Bloomberg did try to give us some credit for something. Sort of. Half-way down the page we get this throw-away line: “The TechCrunch blog previously reported on Facebook's HTML5 efforts.” No link, of course. Typically old media jackassery on the web. Moving on, the real story here remains the one we originally reported: Facebook is attempting to come up with their own way to circumvent Apple’s App Store and Google’s Market, to maintain control of the applications within the Facebook ecosystem. There are mixed signals out there right now as to whether or not Apple may actually be helping Facebook with this effort in some regard. Because many applications (and most games) on Facebook’s platform right now require Flash, they do not work on devices like the iPhone and iPad. If Facebook could get these working through HTML5, it would be another huge blow to Adobe’s platform — which Apple must love . There is some talk that Apple may be interested in seeing this happen within Facebook’s own iPhone app, and their soon-to-be-unveiled iPad app . But again, the key for Facebook is Credits. And that’s where things could get very complicated with Apple. If Facebook tries to circumvent the App Store to sell credits, Apple is clearly not going to want that in any native app (unless some sort of deal is struck, which seems unlikely at this point). But Facebook can get around this by going web-only with the functionality. When we initially reported this, Facebook threw a hissy-fit and tried to spin the press in opposition to our story. This led to t he second story where I revealed more about Project Spartan, including the picture of Credits running in a test version of a Spartan app. Interestingly enough, Bloomberg today comes to the same conclusion I did (a conclusion shared by those actually working on Spartan apps, by the way). “Facebook is seeking to build a software community that rivals Apple's,” Bloomberg notes, pointing out that Facebook would like a piece of the growing mobile app revenue pie that Apple is seeing. Let’s see if Facebook PR throws another hissy fit over what is common sense. Facebook wants and needs to make money. Apple wants and needs to make money. Apple owns a mobile platform to do so. Facebook does not. At some point, this will become an issue. A big one.
 
Amazon Has Opened 15 Fulfillment Centers In 2011, Will Build 'A Few More' By End Of The Year Top
It’s no secret that Amazon is ramping up fulfillment centers across the globe to meet with increasing demand. The e-commerce giant revealed in April that the company had built nine fulfillment centers in 2011 to meet growing demand in sales across the globe. And in May, Amazon opened two more in Arizons and Indiana. In today’s Q2 earnings call, Amazon’s CFO Thomas Szkutak revealed that the company has built 15 new fulfillment centers in 2011, already surpassing the 13 centers that were added this year. And the company plans to build ‘a few more’ by the end of this year. Amazon's fulfillment centers enables the company and third-party merchants to store inventory and fulfill orders. With the 15 added this year, Amazon has roughly 65 fulfillment centers across the globe. Obviously demand is coming both from Amazon’s retail business (sales reached nearly $10 billion this quarter), as well as its fulfillment business for third-party merchants. Crunchbase AMAZON Company: AMAZON Website: http://amazon.com/ Launch Date: 1994 Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) is a leading global Internet company and one of the most trafficked Internet retail destinations worldwide. Amazon is one of the first companies to sell products deep... Learn more
 

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