Tuesday, July 31, 2012

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New Darknet Wants To Match-Up Cypherpunks In Crypto Utopia Top
lockEarlier this year French entrepreneur Ramine Darabiha called for a cypherpunk revival. Looks like he might be getting his wish. Cryptosphere is a new darknet now under development. A darknet is a private and/or anonymous network, sometimes using the public internet for connectivity. Silk Road, a marketplace for illegal drugs, is probably the most famous. You can't use Cryptosphere yet, but eager hackers can take an early look at what's done so far in Github.
 
Dropbox Reports User Accounts Were Hijacked, Adds New Security Features Top
dropbox-logoSeveral weeks ago, reports started to trickle out that a number of Dropbox users were under attack from spam. Since then, Dropbox has been investigating those attacks (with some help from a third-party) and today gave the first update on the progress, saying that some accounts were indeed accessed by hackers, but that it is now adding two-factor authentication and other security features to prevent further problems. For some background: On July 17th, a number of Dropbox users begun noticing an increase in the level spam attacking their accounts. As Sarah reported at the time, the red flag appeared when users begun reporting that the email accounts receiving spam were in fact only tied to their Dropbox accounts, which indicated that the address leak had come from Dropbox itself. Many of those reports came from the company's international users, including Germany, the U.K. and the Netherlands.
 
Facebook Better Get Mobile Quick. 102M People Accessed Solely From Mobile In June, Up 23% Since March Top
Facebook Desktop Shifts To MobileThere's a staggering new statistic in Facebook's 10-Q SEC document today: 102 million people accessed Facebook solely from mobile in June, a massive 23% increase over the 83 million mobile-only users in March. 18.7% of its 543 million monthly mobile users don't even visit its desktop site. That means if it can't make its mobile advertising generate a lot more money within the next year, revenue could plummet. Another dead-serious new stat is that Facebook only grew 10% to 168 million in the US this last year, compared to the global average of 29%.
 
We're Having A Party, And There Will Be A Tiger, A Monkey And Snoop Lion (Not Really) Top
snoop-august2Guys, guys, so because everybody obviously wants to party with Josh Constine, tickets to the TechCrunch annual summer party at August Capital are officially sold out. In case you want a backdoor way in, don't know a guy and don't want to scale the fence, our Facebook Ecosystem CrunchUp tickets are still on sale, though we've only got a few left so yeah, roll the dice.
 
The New Digg Arrives Ahead Of Schedule, Features Tight Facebook And Twitter Integration Top
Coming Soon DiggAfter just six weeks of hard work, Digg's new owners at Betaworks just flipped the switch and re-launched the site. The new Digg was originally scheduled to launch tomorrow, but despite the tight deadline, the Digg team managed to get this completely rewritten version of the site out ahead of schedule. As promised, the new version of Digg puts a strong emphasis on images and is currently free of ads. With this relaunch, Digg is also shipping a new iPhone app and mobile web page.
 
Zynga Made Up 14% Of Facebook Revenues In 1H 2012, Down From 19% In FY 2011 Top
zynga logoHere's another nugget from the release of Facebook's 10-Q today: Zynga accounted for 14 percent of its revenues in the first six months of 2012, but that number is down from the 19 percent of revenue that Zynga made up in 2011. Revenues that Facebook collects from Zynga include payment processing for purchases made through its social games, advertising that third parties show on its gaming apps, and Facebook ads that appear on Zynga.com.
 
This DIY Lego Wheelchair Can Carry (Small) Passengers Top
2012-07-29-21.16.10-1024x764Burf aka Simon Burfield is an iOS programmer and Lego experimenter who tries to take building blocks to the next level. Interestingly, if this wild rideable Lego wheelchair is any indication, he's left the next level and is now firmly in the distant future. Made with 12 Lego NXT motors and 12 multi-directional wheels, this carefully designed prototype can carry around a 198 pound person and is controlled via a small joystick. It can move in multiple directions and even roll side to side to "strafe" through a room.
 
Verizon Can No Longer Charge For Tethering, FCC Declares Top
tetherballVerizon has been slapped with a $1.25 million fine for charging customers to use their cell phones as a mobile Internet hotspot, and has declared that it must allow tethering for free. Google must also reinstate tethering applications from its Android store, which Verizon had asked them to remove. This is especially great news considering more Android devices (and perhaps the next iPhone) are 4G compatible, making mobile Internet nearly universal for Verizon customers. Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T customers should prepare to be gripped by overwhelming jealousy, as it only applies to Verizon.
 
Mozilla Will Nearly Double SF Office, Add 125 People In Early 2013 Top
Mozilla_3893Mozilla announced today that they are expanding the size of their San Francisco office and will add 125 employees to the office's current staff of 150 by early 2013. Mozilla currently occupies the seventh and part of the third floor of the Hills Brothers Building at 2 Harrison St. and will expand to include the first two floors.
 
Facebook Spent $24 Million On Acqui-hires, $633 Million On Patents During The First Half Of 2012 Top
we-are-hiringFacebook makes a good number of talent-focused acquisitions, aka acqui-hires -- but the cost of each deal is normally kept under wraps. In a regulatory quarterly filing the company made today, though, it put an aggregate pricetag on all those "non-material" sized deals it made in the first half of this year: $24 million. Facebook also broke out the exact amount of money it spent on acquiring patents and IP, that it was pretty significant: $633 million. The bulk of that -- $550 million -- went to its purchase of hundreds of AOL patents from Microsoft.
 
Google Delays The Nexus Q To Make It "Better," But Pre-Order Customers Get A Free Dev Unit Top
google-nexus-q,W-A-343306-13Here's hoping you weren't planning on using one of Google's Nexus Qs any time soon -- the company has just revealed to pre-order customers that it has postponed the device's consumer launch because users wanted more out of the curious little orb. That said, Google's tiny media streamer has been unceremoniously yanked from the Google Play store. All interested consumers can do now is give the company their email address for future updates on the situation, as there's no word yet on when Google expects that full-blown launch to take place.
 
Wildfire Only Sells Ads Through Its Partner Adaptly, So Will Google Buy Them Too? Top
Google Adaptly DoneWildfire, just acquired by Google, isn't a social ads company. It relies on its partner Adaptly for access to ads APIs for Facebook and other sites. That means Google may buy Adaptly or another ads company any minute now. Otherwise Google will have to split the profits of social ads Wildfire will continue to sell through Adaptly. As Facebook Sponsored Stories and Twitter's promoted products are taking off, being the middleman between brands and social networks is become quite lucrative and its only sensible that Google would want to own a social ads API tool and/or service.
 
Zynga And Bump Delve Into Their Social-Mobile Future This Friday At The Facebook Ecosystem CrunchUp Top
crunchup2012-wide-for-wp-1Mobile usage is upending web empires, as Silicon Valley has come to realize over the last few years. And we'll have two companies smack in the middle of the shift present at our Facebook Ecosystem CrunchUp this Friday in Redwood City, Calif., sharing how they're surviving in this new world. Get your CrunchUp tickets here. Zynga, the dominant social game developer on Facebook, has been both building and buying its way into mobile gaming to adapt for this change. It's had a few wins, like the growth of its "With Friends" franchise, and some losses, like the decline of Draw Something's traffic. Bump, meanwhile, has been mobile-first since it launched in 2009. The company started out with an app that lets you swap contact information and other data by tapping two phones together -- and it's on track to hit 100 million downloads later this summer. And the company has just gone straight to the heart of mobile-social, with the launch of a new app called Flock that uses geofencing to help you share photos more easily (we came away impressed).
 
Twitter Apologizes For Conflict Of Interest, Pointing Out Olympics Tweet To NBC Top
twitter-nbc1Twitter posted an explanation and apology on their blog regarding the Guy Adams/NBC debacle. "That said, we want to apologize for the part of this story that we did mess up," the post reads.
 
Stagedom: An iPhone App To Follow Updates From Your Favorite Musicians Top
stagedom_homeShahar Nechmad, who previously founded and ran web analytics company NuComony (which was acquired by LivePerson), has a new startup whose pitch, at least, is a little more fun. Stagedom aims to be the app where people can find new music, tour dates, videos, and other updates from their favorite artists. Nechmad admits that music tech is a pretty crowded field right now, but he says that particularly on mobile, no one has really created a unified experience to get everything you want from your favorite musicians — think of the way that most bands once treated Myspace pages as the de facto websites, offering everything that a fan might need. Now, a band's content is usually scattered across various social sites and services like YouTube. Some musicians create their own apps, but as Nechmad notes, "No one want to install 15 different apps." And on the artist side, you want to reach your casual fans too, not just the diehards who are most likely to install your app.
 
Apple Lawyer Outs Internal Samsung Documents That Claim The iPhone Is "Easy To Copy" Top
samsung_phones_before_after_iphoneToday the first shots were fired in the high-profile U.S. patent war between Apple and Samsung, beginning with Apple's opening statements. And no punch was pulled — Apple's lawyer made a few hard-hitting claims in the courtroom, providing documents that show Samsung thought the iPhone was "easy to copy." Harold McElhinny (Apple's lawyer) also showed documents prepared by a Samsung executive that claim that the company was in a "crisis of design" because of the iPhone. The presentation also included images of Samsung's design evolution between pre-iPhone time and now. But despite the evidence, McElhinny's most crushing blow may have come in the form of a simple and well-known tech adage: "As we all know, it is easier to copy than to innovate. Apple had already taken the risks."
 
Amazon Updates Cloud Player: Scan & Match Imports, 256 Kbps Audio Upgrades, Premium Accounts Top
cloudplayer-logoAmazon just updated its Cloud Player music storage service with a number of interesting new features, including an iTunes Match-like scan and match technology that allows Amazon to just scan a user's music library and add matching songs to that user's library without having to upload those songs one by one. Just like Apple, Amazon now also upgrades the audio quality of matched files to 256kbps audio, no matter the original bitrate. In addition, Amazon will automatically move all of its users' previously purchased music from its MP3 store to Cloud Player. To enable these new scan and match imports and audio upgrades, Amazon signed deals with Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Music, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and more than 150 independent distributors, aggregators and music publishers.
 
Google Acquires Wildfire, Will Now Sell Facebook And Twitter Marketing Services Top
blog_imageGoogle has just bought social marketing software developer Wildfire, which lets brands serve marketing and ad campaigns on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and LinkedIn. Wildfire has grown to 400 employees over the last four years and now serves 16,000 customers. Several sources and blogs say the sale price was around $250 million. The acquisition will allow Google to provide advanced software and services to brands who want to run contests, sweepstakes, branded games and more on Google+. Wildfire will still operate as a marketing tool for brands on Google's competing platforms, including Facebook, putting the search giant in a curious position where it earns money on the success of its rivals.
 
NBC Retracts Complaint, Guy Adams Is Back On Twitter Top
twitter-nbc2Independent reporter Guy Adams' Twitter account was restored today. It was suspended after Adams tweeted NBC President of the Olympics Gary Zenkel's email address. Adams tweeted in two parts, "Twitter emails to tell me: "we have just received an update from the complainant retracting their original request...Therefore your account has been unsuspended." No further explanation given, or apology offered."
 
Welcome To The New And Improved Yahoo Mail. And It's Crashing. Top
Screen Shot 2012-07-31 at 10.44.47 AMYahoo Mail users were surprised today by an upgrade that never went through, blocking them from accessing their inbox. Hundreds of users have taken to Yahoo Answers to try to figure out what's happening. Yahoo user "Brad" started a popular thread, "I got a message that Yahoo Mail has been upgraded, that it's faster and easier to use. Yahoo said I needed to consent to the new terms of service. I clicked Accept and the screen blinks and gives me the same Accept or No Thanks option."
 

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