Tuesday, December 13, 2011

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College Tips By Google: You'll Fail Without These 16 Google Products Top
College Tips By GoogleWithout Google, no one ever graduated college. At least that's the message of "College Tips By Google". It's a new site where Google shamelessly suggests its products as the answer to all the problems facing today's students. Here's a list of the 16 products Google suggests and how I think they're actually used by college students:
 
Facebook, Google, Apple And Rackspace Rated Best Places To Work in 2012 Top
glassdoorGlassdoor, a jobs and career community where employees can anonymously rate companies and CEOs, has just released its fourth annual Employees' Choice Awards, listing the top 50 "Best Places to Work," based on surveys collected from U.S. employees in 2011. The top five Best Places to Work, according to employees, are: Bain & Company, McKinsey & Company, Facebook, MITRE, and Google. Looking at just the tech sector, the 2012 best places to work in technology are Facebook, MITRE Google, Apple and Rackspace. Facebook actually slipped from the top spot last year to number 3 on the 2012 list and Google had moved up to the fifth slot from number 30 on last year's list.
 
TaskRabbit Gets $17.8M For "Aggressive" Expansion, Wants To Grow Internationally And Beyond Top
Screen Shot 2011-12-13 at 8.47.10 PMEbay for real world labor TaskRabbit, has seen lightning fast growth in the past couple of months, and has taken advantage of that growth by raising another $17.8 million in Series B funding. Participating in the round are existing investors Shervin Pishevar, Baseline Ventures, First Round Capital, FLOODGATE Fund, Collaborative Fund and Shasta Ventures, in addition to new partners LightSpeed Ventures, Allen & Company, and Tornante Company, former Disney CEO Michael Eisner's new investment firm.
 
Lookout's 2012 Mobile Security Threat Predictions: SMS Fraud, Botnets And Malvertising Top
lokLookout, a company that offers security services for a number of smartphone platforms, is releasing its 2012 Mobile Malware Predictions, based on data collected from its Mobile Threat Network, a cloud-based network which constantly analyzes global threat data to identify and quickly block new threats with over-the-air app updates. The network includes more than one million apps and 15 million user devices worldwide. For background, Lookout's web-based, cloud-connected applications for Android, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and most recently iOS devices help users from losing their phones and identifies and block threats on a consumer's phone. Users simply download the software to a device, and it will act as a tracking application, data backup and a virus protector much like security software downloaded to a computer.
 
How Pixiv Built Japan's 12th Largest Site With Manga-Girl Drawings (Redesign Sneak Peek And Invites) Top
pixiv.com-newest_worksUnless you live in Japan, chances are you've never heard of Pixiv. Even if you do live in Japan, unless you are young and really into drawing manga characters, chances are you've still never heard of Pixiv. But its 3.6 million visitors a month generate an astounding 2.9 billion pageviews. According to comScore, Pixiv is the 12th largest site in Japan measured by pageviews, slightly bigger than Facebook in Japan. And that's just on the Web. Pixiv generates another 900 million pageviews a month on mobile phones. All of this for a site that is stil a pretty barebones image board that up until a year ago required a login to see anything. Pixiv is about to get a major redesign. When I visited Pixiv on my trip to Japan a couple weeks ago, CEO Takanari Katagiri and his team showed me their plans (see video above and screenshots below). A beta of the new site will be ready around Christmas, but 222 TechCrunch readers can sign up now to reserve their spots (use the code "techcrunch").
 
New Features Coming From Yahoo's Livestand (Video Demo) Top
LiveStand.movLater this month Yahoo plans to release new features for its iPad based app, Livestand, which was launched in November and Yahoo describes as a "digital newsstand" where users can "create a personalized magazine based on topics" they find interesting. Debra Weissman, VP Product Management with Livestand, Yahoo offered us a brief early look at what consumers can expect to see.
 
16-Year-Old Programmer Raises Seed Round From Billionaire Li Ka Shing To 'Summarize The Web' Top
LogoLaunching today on the App Store is a new application called Summly that, in short, attempts to summarize the Web. The app was formerly known as Trimit (which we covered back in July), before Founder (and 16-year-old programmer) Nick D'Aloisio raised a seed round from billionaire Hong Kong investor Li Ka-shing and his investment vehicle, Horizons Ventures.
 
Think Openspace Launching A Brick And Mortar App Store Is A Silly Idea? Think Again. Top
Screen shot 2011-12-13 at 6.23.12 PMYes, when you think of an "app store", you probably picture iTunes, the Android Marketplace, or even the Chrome Web App Store or GetJar. That's because apps live in our browsers and on our mobile devices, right? Sort of. Robert Reich, the Co-founder and CEO of Openspace looks down the road and sees the app-ification of everything -- a time when apps will become more like CDs, real, tangible goods -- something more than a transitory download. Maybe that sounds a little crazy -- just as it probably sounds crazy that Openspace launched an actual brick and mortar "app store" this week in downtown Boulder, Colorado. Which might lead you to think, "but how many brick and mortar CD outlets are left? Isn't this a little backwards? Apps live on our phones, only sometimes in our hearts, but not in the real world, right?"
 
Chat Service Meebo Launches New Version Of Site Designed Around Competitive Sharing (!) Top
Screen Shot 2011-12-13 at 6.11.24 PMYou probably know Meebo as a service that lets you easily chat with friends across different IM services, but the company is now rolling out a reimagined version designed around sharing. Think competitive sharing, like who can get the most traffic from their articles. It's a big switch from the former Meebo Messenger IM site (which you can still find here). I've been playing around with it, and here are some initial impressions.
 
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. 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.
 

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