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More Alleged Screenshots Of Google Chrome OS. My, What Big Icons You Have. Top
We’ve just received a pair of screenshots that may be of Google’s upcoming Chrome OS operating system. Google announced the entirely browser-based OS in July, and since then a number of alleged screenshots have popped up that have ranged from laughably bad to somewhat plausible. Because we haven’t seen any confirmed screenshots from Google, anyone with a copy of Photoshop can throw together some Google icons and claim to have the goods, so take these with a grain of salt. The screenshots below depict Google’s Chrome browser, with a dock of unnecessarily large app icons lining the right side of the screen (including what appears to be a Google media player app). Thing is, Google Earth, which is included in the dock, primarily uses a downloadable client, as does Picasa. This doesn’t really mesh well with the fact that Chrome OS is a browser OS . On the other hand, Google does offer a browser plug-in for Google Earth, and you can use a web version of Picasa to browse albums, so they’re still within the realm of possibility. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Report: Netbooks Now A Fifth Of All Portable Computer Shipments Top
Maybe it’s because they are cheap. Maybe it’s because they are small. Or maybe it’s just because people don’t need computers for much more than Net access these days. But the popularity of netbook computers keeps growing. In the second quarter, netbooks accounted for 22.5 of all portable computer shipments worldwide, according to market forecaster DisplaySearch (which is part of the NPD Group). That is up from 5.6 percent a year ago, and 17.8 percent in the first quarter of 2009. At this growth rate, netbooks will soon rival larger notebooks. Netbooks, or mini-notes as DisplaySearch calls them, outgrew larger notebook PCs by nearly 2 to 1. It grew 40 percent quarter over quarter, compared to 22 percent for larger notebooks. Of course, since netbooks are so much cheaper, the growth in revenues is not proportional. Netbooks are taking the most share in Europe, where they had 32.9 percent share in the second quarter, followed by North America (26.6 percent), and China (18.8 percent). In North America, shipments are getting a boost because broadband providers are adding them as incentives for people who sign up for two-year plans. For instance, I’m getting a free HP netbook for signing up for Verizon FIOS. That’s going to be the kitchen/couch PC. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Tesla Snags YouTube Exec To Run Communications Top
Tesla Motors has hired Ricardo Reyes away from Google as the company’s first Vice President of Communications. Reyes is currently the head of global communications and public affairs at YouTube. Reyes will officially join Tesla on September 14. Tesla has been on a roll recently. They announced profitability , secured $465 million in government loans to build their next car plant and raised another $50 million in equity from Daimler that valued the company at $550 million. The press release is here . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Who Dominates Online News In Italy? Not Google News. Top
Last week, the Italian government began an investigation into Google and Google News about allegations of anti-competitive behavior. (For more details, read Google’s initial response or Danny Sullivan’s take ). Italian newspaper publishers claim that Google News is stealing readers from them who skim the headlines on Google News and never bother to click through. It is a familiar refrain , to which the obvious response is: If newspapers want readers to click on their headlines, maybe they should write better headlines. But implicit in these arguments, and an investigation into how Google News is somehow stifling competition in the Italian news industry is that Google News dominates the news in Italy, at least online. That is not the case. According to comScore, the Italian audience of Google News is smaller than at least two of the largest Italian newspaper sites, La Republicca and Corriere Della Sera . In July, Google News had 2.4 million Italian readers versus 3.8 million for both of those Italian newspaper sites. (These numbers reflect only visitors from Italy). While Google News is a decent size in Italy, it by no means dominates the news category. Not to mention that some portion of those 2.4 million visitors are presumably clicking through to news sites when a headline interests them. That could be an Italian news site, or an Italian-language site from a different country, or even a news site or a blog half way around the world. If anything, Google News promotes competition among news outlets. It creates hyper-competition, which is really why newspapers (everywhere) are up in arms against Google. They don’t like the Web, but they can’t sue the Web. So they are going after Google instead. The Italian publishers also allege that if they opt out of Google News, they won’t show up in regular search results, something which Google says is untrue. It doesn’t really make much sense. Presumably, a news article is a high-quality result. The more of those that Google can show in regular search results, the better those overall results and the more related ads it can run alongside them. That is how Google makes money, not from news. But if Google is indeed punishing Italian publishers who choose not to be in Google News results with less visibliity on Google’s main search page, they should be able to prove it with a few simple search examples. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Breaking: Apple "Rock and Roll" Event Happening On September 9 Top
So it looks like the rumors of an Apple event on September 9 are true. This event, themed after a Rolling Stones song seems to involve some classic tunes. It also a music-focused event so that means new iPods. But what else can we expect? TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Button: An iPhone Game That Just May Make You Better At Your Job Top
Fans of the television show Lost will remember that a big part of season 2 revolved around the pushing of a button. Every 108 minutes you had to enter numbers and push the button or the world might end, was the line of thought. Of course, as time went on, people started to wonder if it wasn’t just some psychological experiment. A new iPhone game that involves pushing a button, is a psychological exercise, of sorts. Called Button , the game is about as simple as they come. There is a big button on the screen, and when it lights up, you push it. So why would anyone want to play that game? No, the world isn’t going to end if you don’t, but you will potentially miss out on some free prizes. And pushing the button may just help you get through some mundane tasks throughout your day as well. Button was created by Blank Software , which is a side project of MobileCrunch editor Greg Kumparak . He thinks of it as a passive game, that you pick up and play at various points throughout the day. But he notes that while they were testing it out, they began to notice feedback from testers mentioning that playing the game helped them with their normally mundane tasks at their jobs. The thought is that the effort required to open up and play Button on the iPhone was just enough brain stimulation to keep people engaged in whatever boring tasks they may be doing. Also, knowing a reward was possibly coming for pushing the button made it interesting to users. So what kind of rewards are we talking about? At first, there will be things like $20 gift cards, but eventually they may include larger prizes, we’re told. And there will be plenty of things to unlock in the game; new button skins, for example. Another unlockable feature will allow you to tie your Twitter account to the button. And if you tweet out when you level up (which won’t be every time you push the button), you’ll get more points. There will also be a leaderboard for the users with the most points, and people will be able to team up to form groups to combine their points. Blank Software will choose random times to light the button up, and it will light up for every user around the world. And occasionally, they will randomly select one of the Button players and replace their regular button with a prize button. If they see and hit it, they’ll get the prize. If they miss it, or aren’t playing at that time, the prize will be sent back to the system to be sent out again randomly at a later time. Button is a free app, and it will always remain free, Kumparak tells us. The plan for now is to run ads alongside the button, but he notes that if they idea takes off, they have other monetization plans as well. Button is available in the App Store immediately . Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Informal TC/CG Meet-up In Israel on September 8 - UPDATE Top
Hey, all: I, John Biggs , will be in Israel from the Sept 5 through the 10th. I'd love to meet up with some great start-ups in the Jerusalem/Tel Aviv area. I'm most interested in the great gadgets coming out of there but I'm happy to sit down with local folks to talk web services. If you'd like to sponsor an hour of drinks, please let me know. Either way, RSVP to john@crunchgear.com with the subject line "RSVP ISRAEL" or visit the Event Page at Facebook . UPDATE - We're teaming up with the Tel Aviv Beer Tweet-up on the same night at the Dancing Camel Club from 8pm to 11:30pm. We'll see you there! TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
A Look Behind The Curtain At Facebook's Optimization Efforts Top
Facebook is big. Really big . So it comes as little surprise that every tweak made to the site (like the subtle change to the header a few days ago) can have a pretty substantial impact on the way people use the social network. Earlier this week Facebook’s Engineering team posted a note written by intern Zizhuang Yang, who has spent the summer researching how changes in things like load time can affect users. Yang writes about three main experiments he conducted over the last few months, including one involving overall site speed and two in the way pages load, and the results are quite interesting. The first experiment examined how Facebook users would respond to a general slowdown. Yang found that regardless of site speed, users spend around the same amount of time on Facebook. That might sound like good news (at least they don’t get frustrated and leave immediately), but it means that if the site is running slowly users are going to be seeing fewer pages in the same amount of time, which Facebook obviously doesn’t want. So — no surprise here — Facebook is striving to make the site as fast as possible. The second experiment involved the order in which items on the page should load. Yang writes that Facebook has been internally debating whether the page should display everything as quickly as possible, even before some necessary scripts to actually interact with the site have loaded, or to show a white page until everything is good to go and then render it all at once. Yang writes, “In all groups of users, keeping the page blank resulted in lower usage statistics. Thus the debate was resolved.” So if you’re ever on Facebook and you find that a certain button isn’t working for the first second or two after a page loads, this would explain it. The third experiment involved loading stories in the News Feed. Regular Facebook users have likely noticed that the site will automatically fetch more News Feed stories as you scroll down the page. This feels like a nifty new feature, but it was actually designed by Facebook to cut back on load times — News Feed used to show 30 stories at once; now it loads 15 at first and only shows the next 15 if you scroll down the page. What Yang found, however, is that when people do scroll beyond the initial 15 stories they’re shown, they’re happy to wait the extra second or two for 30 new stories to load, which results in a signifiant boost in engagement. This makes perfect sense — if I’m actively reading through the News Feed (as opposed to just seeing it because it’s Facebook’s home page) it’s because I’m killing time or trying to catch up on my friends’ past posts. The more stories shown during this ‘catch-up’ time, the better. Also interesting to note is that Facebook seems keen to put its internship program in the public eye — just last week the site’s blog included a post from an intern who build the Facebook Pages to Twitter syndicator, and now we’re seeing the fruit’s of another intern’s summer experiments. This may well be part of the company’s plan to attract new talent during its recent hiring spree . Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Is the Tyranny of the Mac Fan Boy Waning? Top
Here at TechCrunch there’s a daily argument in the office, on Yammer and even on the blog about the supremacy of the iPhone versus the Google-Voice-goodness of Android phones. I chalked it up to the usual get-off-my-lawn-style ranting of Michael Arrington, and assumed the average techie was still like MG Siegler , a total Mac-head who will love the iPhone no matter how bad the reception, how bad the battery life and how many times it breaks and he has to get a new one. But some reporters– long harassed by Mac fan boys when they’ve dared to criticize the company (read: do their jobs) — are saying a sea change is occurring in Apple fan boy nation. Witness Jon Fortt of Fortune’s recent blog post where he says the Valley owes Microsoft an apology and compares Apple to Napoleon the pig in Animal Farm . He writes: “I’m sorry, Microsoft. On behalf of Silicon Valley, I'm sorry. We cursed you, mocked you, labeled you the Evil Empire. Your crime: trying to control the technology world. Sure, we had reason to be upset. During the dawning of the PC era, the Windows operating system made you the most powerful company in tech, and it went to your head. Your detractors say you intimidated PC makers, crushed Netscape, and tried to turn the web into an extension of the Windows platform. As it turns out, local darling Apple (AAPL) probably would have done the same thing. Just look at how Apple is behaving today with a fraction of the power you had.” Now, look at the comments. You have to scroll pretty far down to get the usual how-dare-you-criticize-our-iPhone-lord-and-savior comments. Most of the comments disagreeing with Fortt are pretty well-reasoned arguments that raise good points. Of course, it’s likely that Fortune moderates its blog comments, so maybe we’re not seeing the whole debate. But on the Sunday morning tech show that both Fortt and I appear on, he argued that indeed the fan boys just weren’t out in the same way they’ve been in the past. Host Scott McGrew argued he too had witnessed a fan boy sea change. [Video below; whole episode is here .] I remain dubious, as much as I’d love to believe that sub-human behavior like the anti-Semitic attacks and death threats that Barrons writer Eric Savitz had to endure in March 2008 would never happen again. Savitz had the gall to report Wall Street was worried that iPod and iPhone sales might sag. It was hardly controversial considering the stock was down 35% for the year at the time he wrote it. So, fan boys: Here’s your chance to agree with me for once . Is Jobs nation still alive and well? For the record, I hope I’m wrong. My husband and I own half a dozen iPods, a Mac desktop and four Mac laptops. We’re clearly fans of Mr. Jobs work. But placing a company above scrutiny is bad for business, bad for the Valley and bad for tech. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Free the H-1Bs, Free the Economy Top
This is a guest post by Vivek Wadhwa, an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Executive in Residence at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa. I have a suggestion for our President on how to boost economic growth without spending a penny: Free the H-1B’s. More than a million doctors, engineers, scientists, researchers, and other skilled workers and their families in the U.S. are stuck in "immigration limbo.” They entered the country legally and have contributed disproportionately to our nation's competitiveness. They paid our high taxes and have been model citizens. All they want to do is to share the American dream and help us grow our economy. They could be starting companies, buying houses, building community centers, and splurging like Americans. But because we don't have enough permanent-resident visas (green cards) for them, they're stuck in the same old jobs they had maybe a decade ago when they entered this country. They are getting really frustrated and many are returning to their home countries to become unwilling competitors . And they are taking our economic recovery with them. Xenophobes will claim that immigrants take jobs away and blame them for everything that is wrong in their lives and in America. But as TechCrunch wrote last week, skilled immigrants create more jobs than they take away. That is a fact. My research team documented that one quarter of all technology and engineering startups nationwide from 1995 to 2005 were started by immigrants. In Boston, it was 31%, in New York, 44%, and in Silicon Valley an astonishing 52%. In 2005, these immigrant founded companies employed 450,000 workers. Add it up. That's far more than all the tech workers we gave green cards to in that period. It's not only jobs that they’ve created. In 2006, more than 25% of U.S. global patents had authors who were born abroad — and this doesn't even count people like me, who came here, became citizens, and then filed multiple patents. Of Qualcomm's global patents, 72% had foreign-born authors, as did 65% of Merck's, 64% of GE's, and 60% of Cisco's. I'm not talking about silly patents filed with the U.S. Patent Office here, I'm talking about WIPO PCT  applications — the patents that help our companies compete globally. Why does Silicon Valley need a foreign-born workforce? Because these immigrants are able come to a foreign land where they face hardship and discrimination and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the world's best technical minds and most successful entrepreneurs.  They are able motivate Silicon Valley's top guns to work even harder and think smarter. They add a global perspective and enrich America. The largest immigrant founding groups are Indian, British, and Chinese. Indian-born immigrants, for example, founded 6.7% of America's tech companies and 15.5% of those in Silicon Valley — but, according to the U.S. census, constitute way less than 1% of the U.S. population. So do the Chinese, but they contribute to 16.8% of our global patents. It doesn't take a statistician to figure that these are pretty impressive numbers. Yes, I know that H-1B's don't start companies. And that is the problem. We don’t let them. Hundreds of thousands of mostly very smart and highly educated workers who could be starting companies are not. While they wait for their green cards, they can't even change jobs or accept a promotion, for fear of losing their turn in line. If they lose their job, they have zero days to find another one — or get booted out of the country. Their employers know that these workers aren't going anywhere, so they can go easy on the salary increases and bonuses. Some unscrupulous employers do take advantage of them. And their spouses usually can't work, and in some states can't even get drivers licenses, because they don't have social-security numbers. Does this sound like America? Unlike the daunting economic problems facing the country, this problem is easy to fix. Just increase the number of green cards for skilled workers. Maybe let them cut the line if they buy a house or start a company that employs a bunch of Americans. My guess is that we'll get tens of thousands of startups and a couple of hundred thousand houses sold. That is a bigger economic boost than the clunkers program we’ve just thrown $2 billion dollars at. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 

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