Monday, July 30, 2012

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Still Protesting? Facebook Will Soon Force You To Switch To Timeline Top
No Old Facebook Profile DesignOver the next few months, anyone still refusing to voluntarily switch to the Timeline profile redesign will be automatically migrated, Facebook tells me. Users could choose to adopt the redesign starting in January, but there have been some hold-outs who didn't want their whole life becoming easier to access, or just hated change. Soon they won't have a choice, though. Facebook says it plans to complete the rollout by this fall. By waiting to minimizing the number of users it's forcing to switch, and doing it all gradually, Facebook will have successfully avoided the wildfire protests that characterized its early years.
 
With Marissa Mayer In Place, Yahoo's Interim CEO Ross Levinsohn Officially Leaves The Company Top
Image1 for post TC50 Backstage: Ross Levinsohn on MySpace, Ad IndustryAfter Scott Thompson's unceremonious departure from Yahoo's CEO spot earlier this year, Ross Levinsohn took over as the company's interim chief executive -- and for a while there, he was widely expected to eventually be named Yahoo's permanent CEO. But, of course, that's not how things worked out: This month Yahoo announced that longtime Google executive Marissa Mayer would take the CEO spot. And now it's official that Levinsohn will not be sticking around to see how it plays out. His last day is tomorrow.
 
PaidContent Founder Rafat Ali Launches Travel News Site Skift Top
Screen Shot 2012-07-30 at 1.46.13 PMRafat Ali, founder of paidContent, sold his company to The Guardian for roughly $12.5 millionin 2008. Then he spent two years traveling the world, in a "quest for isolation after eight clamorous years." Now, he has built "the homepage for the travel industry" to inform your travels. Ali and co-founder Jason Clampet, who ran Frommers.com's original content efforts, aim to disrupt the enormous travel industry with a site that offers a combination of original media content and data tools to users, especially business travelers.
 
This Friday's Facebook Ecosystem CrunchUp: Come Learn What's Working For Airbnb And SongPop Top
crunchup2012-wide-for-wp-1Facebook is still huge and growing -- it added another 50 million users this past quarter, and it's about to break the one-billion-humans mark. But it still has to figure out how to survive on mobile. So we're focusing on Facebook and its developer ecosystem at our annual CrunchUp event this Friday in Redwood City, Calif. Our aim is to detail what's working and what's not, so entrepreneurs can better strategize how to think about Facebook when building their companies. Get your Facebook Ecosystem CrunchUp tickets now! They can be found here. Some mobile-savvy startups are getting big growth from Facebook's platform. One of them is the music game SongPop. It now has more than 2.7 million daily active users and 11.4 million monthly active users via Facebook, and it's also a top free app in the Apple App Store. I'll be trying to get all the secrets to its success out of its creator, Mathieu Nouzareth, this Friday as part of our panel on Facebook's platform.
 
The API Hub: Jeff Bezos-Backed Mashape Launches To The Public With 430 APIs In Tow Top
Screen shot 2012-07-30 at 12.52.33 PMAugusto Marietti, Marco Palladino and Mike Zonca founded Mashape in November 2010 to create a unified, all-in-one marketplace where one could go to find, sell, distribute, and hack on APIs, believing that APIs would become an essential part of the conversation for developers. Though it wasn't an easy road, last September Mashape raised $1.6 million from NEA, Charles River Ventures, Jeff Bezos, and Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors -- to name a few. Mashape has been in private beta since, testing its model and "building out the supply-side," says Marietti. Today, the startup is finally throwing back the curtains, officially opening to the public, with new features and inventory in stock.
 
Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before: Olympic Athlete Kicked Out Of Games For Tweet Top
Switzerland's Michel Morganella runs onMichael Morganella, a defender on the Swiss Olympic soccer squad, has been kicked off the team for an offensive tweet about South Koreans, hours after losing to the country's team. Five days ago, Voula Papachristou, Greece's triple-jump champion, was kicked off her team for an offensive tweet about West Nile virus. Morganella's Twitter account, @morgastoss, has been deleted, but Swiss newspaper Le Matin grabbed a shot of the tweet.
 
Codecademy Adds Python Lessons, Promises More Server-Side Languages Top
codecademylogoCodecademy, the startup offering online lessons and tools to help people learn how to code, is adding Python to its lesson line-up starting today. Until now, co-founder Zach Sims says Codecademy has "been focused on client-side languages and markup - javascript, HTML, and CSS." Starting today, you'll be able to find user-generated Python lessons on the site, and Sims adds, "This is the beginning of new language support on Codecademy - Python is only the first server side language you'll see."
 
Bing Improves Its Facebook Integration With Friend Tagging Top
bing_logoMicrosoft's Bing search engine launched its social sidebar last month and the company has been adding features and support for additional social networks ever since. The core of Bing's social efforts, however, is its Facebook integration and the company today announced a nice new feature for Facebook users on Bing. The social sidebar already allowed users to ask their Facebook friends questions right from Bing, but with today's update, Bing is also allowing users to tag up to five of their friends whenever they ask a question. This, says Microsoft, will allow you "to effortlessly tap into the collective wisdom of your social network, and get input from your friends who are in the know."
 
Distracted Walking Injuries Quadruple — Mobile Devices to Blame? Top
images (5)The number of citizens wandering into ditches, on-coming cars, and each other while staring at electronics has "quadrupled", according to the Associated Press. "Look up. Drivers aren't always looking out for you," reads a Delaware traffic safety sign, one of many states that are turning to the magic of PSA billboards as a substitute for state legislatures that have almost universally opposed laws criminalizing "distracted walking." While the Internet is overflowing with hilarious bloopers, such as one man walking into a real-life black bear (video below), distracted walking is a serious problem, and is implicated in the 4.2% rise in pedestrian fatalities in 2010.
 
Showyou Adds Olympics Content To Its Apps, Now Has More Than 28,000 Video Clips (And Counting!) Top
Screen Shot 2012-07-30 at 11.47.36 AMOne problem with 2012 Olympics coverage is that there's so much of it. If you're in the U.S., you can turn to NBCOlympics.com for full video coverage of the Summer Games, including clips, highlights, and full-length video of competitions as they happen. But with all that content, it's difficult to sort through and find what you're actually looking for. Want a better way to find and discover what's happening at the Olympics? Showyou is trying to solve that problem, by automatically highlighting the Olympics content that its users are sharing with each other in the app and on other social networks.
 
Startup Claims 80% Of Its Facebook Ad Clicks Are Coming From Bots Top
Screen shot 2012-07-30 at 11.52.41 AMA lot of people like to complain about their experiences on major web platforms such as Facebook, but most of them stick around as users, feeling that the pros outweigh the cons. But Limited Run, a startup that makes a software platform for musicians and labels to sell physical products like vinyl records, says it has reached the final straw with its experience as a small business advertising on Facebook -- and as a result is completely withdrawing its presence on the social networking platform.
 
Critic Of NBC Olympics Coverage Has Twitter Account Suspended for Posting Exec's Email Top
twitter-nbc1Twitter shut down Independent reporter Guy Adams after he tweeted a top NBC executive's email address. Adams has been a staunch critic of NBC's Olympics coverage, tweeting up a storm about NBC's factual inaccuracies and other broadcast shortcomings. Adams tweeted the corporate email address of Gary Zenkel, President of the NBC Olympics. 
 
No More Calls From Strangers: Amicus Uses Facebook To Recruit Political Volunteers Top
Amicus - Truly social outreach for cause-based organizationsThe process of recruiting volunteers is a pain felt by the entire American electorate: citizens are quick to hang up on complete strangers begging for their time and campaign organizations, as a result, are perpetually short-staffed. Amicus, a Y Combinator nonprofit volunteer-recruitment platform, may have found a clever way to ensure that citizens are only contacted by trusted friends. Amicus scours public and private databases and matches names up with their volunteers' Facebook friends, assigning volunteer outreach only to those who have a personal bond between the caller. "Amicus' friend-to-friend connections enhance our traditional outreach program and make it easier to mobilize our supporters online," said Jared Schwartz, Director of Digital strategies, AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the U.S. The heart of Amicus is an online dashboard that presents volunteers with a ready made list of friends that need to be contacted, complete with a leaderboard, badges, and other gaming elements to incentivize the thankless job of political outreach.
 
Facebook Timeline Photos Redesign Lets You Blow Up Favorites 4X Larger, Shows Tagged Shots First Top
Facebook Timeline Photos RedesignFacebook is taking photo curation to next level. You can now favorite your own photos to make them appear 4X larger in a revamped Photos section of your profile. The redesign that rolls out over the next few days also sees a much better navigation system that first brings you to "photos of you" or whomever's profile you're on, instead of a list of albums. The update doesn't automatically feature the most beloved photos on your Timeline based on Likes and comments, the way Google+ now does in its news feed on tablet. Still, it digitizes a natural behavior of how we interact with photos in the physical world -- making big prints of our favorites.
 
Mozilla Confirms It Will Join Berlin's New 'Factory' Campus Top
Screen Shot 2012-07-30 at 19.11.22We've covered them since before they existed, but now "Factory", Berlin's new, vast tech campus, is taking shape. As builders adapt old factory buildings (an area which will cover 107,000 square feet or 10,000 square meters), the privately-funded initiative has announced that Mozilla will become an anchor resident in the facility, which plans to house a number of startups large and small. Jim Cook, CFO of Mozilla also confirmed that Mozilla will be hiring in Berlin. Confirmed so far are the startups 6Wunderkinder, Four Sektor, Toast, Urge iO, Views, and local tech blog Silicon Allee. But the expanding SoundCloud team will take on a large swathe of the vast amount of space available, which will feature a basketball court, gallery, conference area, cafe and - last we heard - a swimming pool.
 
Keen On… Dan Wagner: Why American Entrepreneurs Are "Slightly Parochial" [TCTV] Top
Screen Shot 2012-07-30 at 8.47.14 AMWhile the eyes of the world are focused on the global competition in London at the moment, it's still quite rare to hear of English start-up entrepreneurs able to successfully compete globally with the Yanks. But one London based entrepreneur who might buck this trend is Dan Wagner, the founder of the successful publishing platform M.A.I.D and the current chairman of Bright Station Ventures. Indeed, his latest ecommerce venture, mPowa, has been in the news recently because of accusations from Jack Dorsey's Square that Wagner's mPowa has been copying Square's images in their promotional material. But when I sat down with Wagner in his central London office, he not only rejected the idea that mPowa had borrowed anything from Square but he told me that American entrepreneurs are "slightly parochial" in their approach to the increasingly global Internet marketplace.
 
The Best Gym For Startups: CrossFit Top
images (3)It's surreal to see an entire startup engineering team that could double as a troupe of volunteer firefighters. Yet, for the growing list of startups that are sending their workforce to the Navy Seal-friendly gym phenomenon, CrossFit, having an entire team of buff employees is surprisingly realistic. "We carry so much more energy throughout the the day after a workout," says Neverware co-founder Joshua Hefter, whose entire team regularly treks down to the Black Box Crossfit Gym in New York. The startup life has "a strong culture around group activity and intensity, and we found that those two things really describe the Crossfit experience."
 
Hey Google! I Don't Care About Hangouts, I Just Want To Read My Email Top
dead-gmailMarissa Mayer, please build us all a better Gmail over at Yahoo. Gmail is a disaster. That's right, I said it. There's an undercurrent of frustration surrounding Google's webmail service, which is still growing like crazy (likely due to Android activations), but is now widely known to be "painfully slow." The more you use it, the worse it gets. Even Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham called out Gmail as painfully slow in a recent essay detailing ambitious startup ideas, saying that if someone were to build a service that was only as good as Gmail, but fast, that alone would allow them to pull away users from Google's service. Despite this, what does Google do? It keeps adding bells and whistles to Gmail. Video hangouts? I don't want video hangouts in my Gmail. I want to read my email messages. Or rather, feel free to add video hangouts to Gmail, after you fix the damned thing.
 
T-Mobile To Launch $249 Ice Cream Sandwich-Powered Galaxy Note On August 8 Top
galnotetmoT-Mobile's Galaxy Note has been one of the worst-kept handset secrets in recent memory but the one thing the carrier managed to keep close to its proverbial chest is when its customers could actually go and get their hands on one. According to CNET, T-Mobile will begin selling its version of Samsung's 5.3-inch phablet on August 8, for a cool $249 with a two-year contract. Of course, whether or not you should buy one is another story entirely. Sure, there's nothing wrong with the T-Mobile version per se -- it's nearly identical to the AT&T model, save for its lack of an LTE radio and the fact that it ships loaded with Ice Cream Sandwich. What really makes things dicey is the launch window that T-Mobile and Samsung have come up with.
 
Google Replaces Gmail Video Chats With Google+ Hangouts Top
Hangouts in Gmail - YouTubeThis was probably inevitable: Google today announced that it is replacing video chats in Gmail with Google+ Hangouts. The company first brought video chat to Gmail in 2008, but ever since the launch of Google+, it was only a matter of time before the company decided to replace its old video chat feature with Google+'s marquee group video chat tool. Hangouts, Google says, "utilize the power of Google's network to deliver higher reliability and enhanced quality" and will allow Gmail users to also reach people not only when they are using Gmail, but also "if they are on Google+ in the browser or on their Android or iOS devices."
 

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