Tuesday, December 13, 2011

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Google Makes Street View Images Of Post-Tsunami Japan Available On Custom Site Top
futureIn July, Google announced that it would be sending its Street View cars through the areas of Japan stricken by the March earthquake and tsunami. Today the work of stitching and annotating is finished and the data is available to be browsed like any other Street View location on a special website they've called "Build the Memory," though it is also labeled as Memories for the Future. A little clicking around brought me to several affecting sights, for instance a tranquil playfield converted to an enormous debris dump near Sendai. The location they feature in the blog post also really allows you to see the devastation at close range.
 
New Tweets Per Second Record — 25,088 TPS — Set By Screening Of Japanese Movie "Castle in the Sky" Top
Screen Shot 2011-12-13 at 5.28.00 PMMove over Beyonce (sigh, I can't believe I'm writing this), a new tweets per second record has been set. According to a statement by Twitter, the Japanese television screening of Hayao Miyazaki's "Castle in the Sky" hooked up 25,088 Tweets per second, more than twice the previous TPS record, on December 9th. Prior to the "Castle in the Sky" tweeting the record had been set this August when Beyonce's big MTV #VMA pregnancy announcement gave Twitter a record bump: 8,868 Tweets per second. Before that it was held by a U.S. women's soccer team's game with 7,196 Tweets per second.
 
Evidence Supports Facebook's Plan To Monetize Mobile With Sponsored Story News Feed Ads Top
Facebook Mobile Sponsored Stories MockupFor the first time, Facebook may start showing ads in its mobile apps and HTML5 site, sources close to the company's ads team tell me. They would come in the form of mobile news feed Sponsored Stories -- social ads that show a friend's interaction with a brand rather than traditional display ads for which there's no real estate on mobile. Bloomberg received similar information from undisclosed sources. When I asked Facebook's ad representative Brandon McCormick a week ago about the potential for mobile news feed Sponsored Stories, he coyly told me "I think that could be interesting." More evidence for the plot...
 
Investors Were Kicked Off The Twitter Board "For The Good Of The Company" Top
Screen Shot 2011-12-13 at 4.33.42 PMIn digging around trying to investigate rumors that KPCB VC John Doerr lost his "board observer"status at Twitter two weeks ago, I came across the information that almost all investors including Doerr were told to stop coming to board meetings in late August/September, when it was reported that Fred Wilson and Bijan Sabet had left.
 
Startup Trials: Quipol Looks To Disrupt Online Polling In A Crowded Market Top
Screen shot 2011-12-13 at 12.50.33 AMIt's a tender situation, being a startup, isn't it? Here you have what you think is a great product, maybe it's even a little disruptive, but you're not naive enough to think that you're the only one who's ever thought of this idea/product. At any moment, some giant or more well-funded startup could make your idea/widget/feature/tool/product their priority and with a little marketing spend, you'd be toast. Bootstrapping, you rely on your users' feedback to tell you what works and what doesn't, iterate, and hope that your user base grows organically until you have a sustainable business. That's the hope, right? The same goes for Max Yoder, a 23-year-old designer from Indiana -- except that in Yoder's case, he launched his startup out of his bedroom in Indianapolis. Yoder recently graduated from college, at which point he went to work at Compendium to learn about startups, media software, and to help pay off his student loans. To help his cause, he was selected as an Orr Entrepreneurship Fellow last year, and has, over the last seven months, been building his startup.
 
Battle Of The Browsers: iOS 5′s Browser Is Still (Slightly) Better Than Android's Top
Little FightersAlright, fanboys: get your flamethrowers ready. HTML5 framework development house Sencha has just put a wide array of performance tools to use to answer one of life's geekiest questions: Who's got the better browser, Android 4 or iOS 5? I'd save the answer until the end, but I suppose the headline gives its away: while Android 4's browser is a "major step forward" for the platform, iOS 5's offering still wins out in the end — but just by a hair!
 
Microsoft Kinectimals Appears On The iPhone, As Cute As Can Be Top
microsofts-kineMicrosoft has ported Kinectimals, the Xbox 360 game that involves the care and feeding of dangerous animals in the wild, to the iPhone, suggesting that (at least in the short term) even Microsoft sees the value of releasing on iOS first. The $2.99 game recreates the Xbox version fairly faithfully but without the Kinect motion controls. Interestingly, the app also allows you to "unlock" new cubs on the Xbox, proving that paid DLC can hide in multiple guises.
 
Other OS Class Action Case Against Sony Dismissed Top
ps3osThe "Other OS" controversy is one of those things that, while in a way trivial, is really a proxy battle over a much larger problem. Briefly stated, Sony upset some users by removing the ability to install another OS on their PS3, an option that allowed the powerful console to be used as a PC, media center, or pretty much anything. The removal of this option and effective outlawing of the practice caused a geeky backlash that had less to do with the inability to run a Linux box on your TV than the fact that Sony was dictating what you could do with your device after the fact. These things get resolved in all sorts of ways, but this one ended up in a class action lawsuit that said Sony was in breach of its agreement with users. Unfortunately for the class members, the suit has been dismissed on the grounds that the behavior may have been questionable but could not be shown to be illegal.
 
Destroy Your Friends With FaceInvaders Top
full1 Do you hate your Facebook friends? Do you want to blow them all up in fiery blasts of laser light? Sure, we all do. FaceInvaders allows you to shoot down your social graph. The game is a simple Space Invaders clone with a twist - each alien is a face randomly selected from your Facebook account. You shoot down friends hither and yon, allowing you to passive-aggressively destroy the people who you pretend to love.
 
Paul Allen And Burt Rutan Launch Stratolaunch Systems, Plan To Build World's Largest Aircraft Top
stratolaunchHaving conquered the terrestrial realm, today's big money is looking to the skies for new regions to subjugate. And what was a lark ten years ago now appears to be a common hobby among a certain ambitious type of mogul not given to the habit of collecting megayachts. Their millions have produced results, however, and while the shuttles have been retiring, the private space ships have been making flight after flight. Paul Allen and Burt Rutan worked together on the original SpaceShipOne, part of a challenge to build a reliable extra-atmospheric aircraft. The design has been refined and (to an extent) commercialized by Virgin Galactic, but Allen and Rutan want to make an entirely new aircraft. And they're not modest about their ambition: Stratolaunch Systems, their new venture, aims to create the largest aircraft ever flown. How's that for a mission statement?
 
Facebook Changes Helping Developers Reach Users (Including Zynga, Ahead Of Its IPO) Top
Screen Shot 2011-12-13 at 11.25.54 AMWith its initial public offering coming up later this week, Zynga is making a few notable traffic gains on Facebook and mobile. Older games like FarmVille are growing, not just new ones like CastleVille. The obvious reasons include it doing more advertising and cross-promotion -- and getting some extra publicity out of new launches and media events. But it looks like there's more going. Facebook appears to have made a few adjustments to how users see app activity within the last month or so.
 
Republic Wireless Is Launching Free International Calling — Powered By Their Own Country Code Top
republicwirelessRepublic Wireless, the potentially disruptive mobile phone carrier that uses special hybrid Wifi/cellular phones, has another plan to help spur interest and drastically reduce your phone costs. We've confirmed with the company that starting this week, it's going to let its users to receive international calls to any phone, free of charge. Well, that's their aim anyway — read on for the details. For those that missed our initial coverage, Republic Wireless is a subsidiary of Bandwidth.com — a company that gets relatively little attention in the mainstream press, but whose sprawling Internet infrastructure is responsible for powering portions of many of the most popular VoIP services, including Google Voice, Skype, Twilio, and others.
 
As webOS Goes Open Source, HP Loses Another Developer Relations Guy Top
hpYikes, talk about unfortunate timing. With HP having just recently announced that webOS is going open source, the last thing they need is for their (small, but surprisingly capable) developer community to start falling apart. They lost Richard Kerris, VP of Worldwide Developer Relations, to Nokia back in late October — and today, another of their Developer Relations guys is headed for the door. Chuq Von Respach, Community Head for webOS Developer Relations who describes his job as being the "primary contact point between HP and it's webOS application developers", has just disclosed (via the developer relations forums, in fact) that tomorrow will be his last day at the company.
 
NTSB Recommends Nationwide Ban On Mobile Device Use While Driving Top
NTSB-LogoIf the National Transportation Safety Board has their way, talking on the phone while driving would be a thing of the past. The regulatory body recommended today that use of any handheld device while driving a car should be banned nationwide. The recommendation came about while the NTSB board discussed a tragic motoring accident in Gray Summit, Missouri that was believed to have been caused by a driver using a cell phone.
 
Pinned Posts, The Twitter Brand Page Feature Facebook and Google+ Should Steal Top
Facebook Steal Twitter DOneOverall, the new Twitter brand Pages are pretty underwhelming. But one great feature they offer is pinned posts -- the ability to semi-permanently feature an expanded rich media tweet at the top of the Page. This help brands customize their Page to drive traffic to a specific link, photo, or video, promote a contest or important news, and make sure first time visitors always see a high quality piece of content. Oh hey, you know who else could  benefits from pinned post?  Facebook, because its custom Page app platform is too complicated for some businesses, and Google+, because it doesn't even have an app platform.
 
With Watch It Button, Plexus Creates A 'Super Netflix Queue' For Movies Across The Web Top
WatchIt_Logo_LargeDespite its struggles of late, Netflix is still one of the most popular sources when it comes to online streaming of movies and TV shows. (Although things may change if it's acquired by Verizon.) For many of us, the Netflix queue is our go-to source for bookmarking films that we'd like to watch at a later date. One new startup, called Plexus Entertainment, wants to take the Netflix formula and apply it to a broader scale. In the big picture, Plexus' goal is to connect films and filmmakers with their audiences, so to do that, they've launched "Watch It" in public beta to allow users to keep track of movies they're interested in, where those movies are playing, and to be proactively notified of all the different ways to view those films. Huzzah!
 
American Airlines First To Be Granted FAA Approval For Pilot iPads Top
ipilotIf you're flying American on Friday, there's a chance your pilot will be using an iPad instead of the traditional paper flight charts. The airline has reportedly become the first major one to get FAA approval for the device, though smaller charter lines have had it for a while. American announced their intention to make the switch back in June, joining Alaska and Delta and probably a few others by now. There's been a bit of a dust-up regarding the actual fuel savings. And while they're miniscule, airlines are continually trimming things down and the loss of 35 pounds of charts from every plane in a fleet adds up quickly: American estimates over a million dollars a year. Not only that, but as Delta hopes, the iPad (or Xoom) will also improve communications and flight quality.
 
App.net Now Helps Mobile Developers Spruce Up Their Facebook Pages Top
fbshotYes, that title is laughably buzzwordy. You may not have used App.net yourself, but you've almost certainly come across one of their sites: the startup makes it easy for mobile developers to build attractive, informative splash pages. In other words, it helps them establish a web presence and build SEO — things that are often surprisingly neglected by mobile app developers, who are understandably more concerned about where they're appearing on the App Store and Android Market rankings. You can check out Evernote's App.net page as an example right here. Today, App.net is adding another feature to its suite of products: it's making it easy for mobile developers to establish a good presence for their apps on Facebook. CEO Dalton Caldwell points out that many developers with major mobile apps don't do a particularly good job promoting their mobile apps from their Facebook pages.
 
Entrepreneurs Debut $2.5M Accelerator To Invest In India-Focused Startups Top
iigA new startup accelerator called the India Internet Group (IIG) is debuting today as fund to invest in India-focused, early stage internet and mobile startups. The size of IIG is $2.5 million and with an average investment size of $50,000 to $250,000. IIG is the brainchild of a number of Indian-American entrepreneurs and technology execs including Nihal Mehta (LocalResponse), Vijay Chattha (VSCpr), Sunjay Guleria (Exclusively.In), Gautam Gandhi, Rajan Anandan, Anuradha Duggal. The fund itself will be managed by entreprneur Anirudh Suri.
 
Humble Indie Bundle 4 Goes Live (And It's So, So Good) Top
Meat BoyI may not mention it often, but I'm kind of obsessed with 2D twitch platformer Super Meat Boy. I've burned barrels of midnight oil battling my way through its nigh-impossible later levels, played until my hands cramped more times than I can count, and its namesake character is the only thing besides the TechCrunch logo (and the silly AOL inventory sticker) that graces the lid of my laptop. So when Super Meat Boy shows up in a Humble Indie Bundle with a bunch of other ridiculously good games collectively selling for less than the cost of a footlong sandwich, you just know I've gotta write it up. Meet Humble Indie Bundle 4, which is quite possibly the best bundle yet.
 

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