Tuesday, September 1, 2009

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Gmail Now Really Down - Can I Get My Email Back Please Top
We wrote this morning about Gmail suffering some turbulence, but it appears now that it has completely crashed and disapeared. Both Apps For Domain and the usual consumer Gmail service are down completely. Google seem to be going backwards on fixing the problem, this morning they sent out an alert saying: September 1, 2009 8:18:00 AM PDT Google Mail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change. I use Apps For Domain for everything - my contacts, my email, my todo list, my chat, my documents and more recently, my phone. As soon as it went down, I noticed in less than a second. I am now completely stuck, after a few months of being impressed by how I was able to run my entire life on Google. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Developers, Be Warned: Apple Has Apparently Trademarked Those Glossy Chat Bubbles Top
Last night, we wrote about another developer thoroughly bashing the app store for its inane approval policies. This time it was well known developer Joe Stump, who had an important bug-fix for his company’s game Chess Wars sit in App Store limbo for six weeks. Finally, this morning an Apple representative named Richard called Stump to inform him why Chess Wars was being rejected after the six week wait: the bubbles in its chat rooms are too shiny, and Apple has trademarked that bubbly design. Yes, the App Store has reached a new low. Upon hearing this, Stump says he specifically asked the Apple representative to confirm that these bubbles were in fact trademarked, to which the representative responded, “Yes”. The representative said Stump needed to make the bubbles “less shiny” and also helpfully suggested that he make the bubbles square, just to be sure. Of course, there are numerous other apps that have used this glossy chat appearance, including Facebook and Tweetie, a very popular Twitter client. The difference in these is that they include small thumbnails of user photos, which Chess Wars doesn’t have. Stump asked the Apple representative if including small photos in the interface would solve the problem by helping to differentiate it from Apple’s native SMS app, but the Apple representative said that it was the bubbles themselves that are the issue. Which means that Apple is either being remarkably inconsistent in its approval policies (which would be nothing new), or they’re about to launch a crusade to eliminate these glossy bubbles from any application that dares use them. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Facebook Will Take Another Step Into The Location Game Tomorrow With Nokia Top
There are no shortage of whispers out there right now as to what Facebook’s plans for location are. With rival Twitter having recently announced its geolocation API , the pressure is on the larger network to deliver something. Tomorrow will bring a step in that direction, as Nokia will announce a new service at its Nokia World event that will utilize location within Facebook, we’ve learned. Now, to be clear, this is not Facebook officially getting into the game itself yet, but it’s big enough that Henri Moissinac, Facebook’s director of mobile, will apparently be using his keynote address at Nokia World to unveil this, we’ve heard. The app looks to be a direct result of the Nokia purchase of the location-based social network Plazes, in the summer of 2008. As you can see in the screenshot below, an Ovi Map (Nokia’s map property) will reside inside of Facebook and show where you are. It can also update your Facebook status with your location, and a link to it on one of these maps. Other services such as Yahoo’s Fire Eagle and Whrrl have applications to set your location within Facebook , but those are still rather cumbersome to use, and haven’t taken off within Facebook. Presumably, this Nokia announcement would also be tied into its mobile devices, which could get it access to millions of users right off the bat. It’s also interesting that this Nokia/Facebook concept appears to work around “checking-in” places, which is what services like Foursquare (and Plazes before it), use for location. That’s different from something like Google Latitude or Loopt, which simply track your location. At some point, Facebook is going to have to get off the bench and throw its considerable weight into the location-based services arena itself. That’s definitely happening, we’ve heard from many sources, but the question is, when? For now, partnerships will have to do. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Hey, eBay Actually Did Ok With Skype Top
eBay bought Skype in September 2005 for $4.1 billion. Today they sold 65% of it for much less , valuing Skype at $2.75 billion. It seems like a big loss, and guys like Om Malik are saying eBay shareholders should be angry. I’m not going to argue with the fact that eBay was negligent in buying a company without taking control of its core intellectual property. But when I look at this deal, and how the market has changed in the last four years, it looks to me like eBay made out ok. Or even more than ok. First of all, eBay never paid the full $4.1 billion for skype. 2/3 of a $1.5 billion earnout wasn’t paid , so the total purchase price was around $3.1 billion. After the write-downs, eBay was carrying Skype on its books at a value below $2 billion dollars. Skype is projected to make $200 million of so in EBITDA in 2010, so today’s acquisition implies a 14x multiple on that EBITDA (thanks to Mark Mahaney at Citi Investment Research for the quick financial analysis). Mahaney says “From a non-strategic buyer, that would seem to be a high multiple.” Clearly, ebay got more for Skype than they thought they would. Also, the market (and eBay) hasn’t done too well over the last few years. Half of the original purchase price was paid in eBay stock, which has declined by more than 50% since late 2005. Finally, Skype has been profitable, and eBay has taken those profits off the table. Skype was likely breakeven in 2006, says Mahaney. But he estimates they generated $44 million in cash flow in 2007, $116 million in 2008 and projected $164 million in 2009. That’s $324 million eBay has taken off the table in aggregate. The market is way, way down and Skype is a somewhat damaged asset with the IP litigation ongoing. The fact that eBay is getting most of its purchase price back, in cash, is a big win for them. And they still own 35% of the company and can get additional gains in a later IPO or sale. And the best news is that Skype is finally free of the dragging effect of a huge corporate parent. They can now move forward and find their destiny. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Exclusive Screenshots Of Twingly Channels: A Personalized, Real-Time Memetracker Top
Twingly, the Swedish startup that brought us a microblogging search tool, a search engine for blogs, and a global ranking system for blogs, is launching a new product called Twingly Channels. Twingly Channels, which will officially launch in closed beta in October, will allow users to create their own personalized real-time memetracker. A mix between Digg, Friendfeed and Techmeme, Twingly Channels allows users to create their own personalized memetracker by collecting feeds and search terms covering any topic or event into a channel they share with others. Twingly Channels, which is updated in realtime, has three main sources of content: links posted by users, content from RSS feeds, and real-time search results for terms from blogs and microblogs (i.e. Twitter). The resulting stream is filtered into a Friendfeed-like channel where people can comment on, like, or dislike incoming items. Channels will be public by default, but to comment or subscribe you will need to sign up. You will also be able to login with your Twitter or Facebook account. One interesting component is a ranking system to filter content. Every item coming into the channel is continuously ranked using links from blogs, Tweets, user comments and likes. The highest ranked items are shown in the Popular view. The site sounds like it could be incredibly useful for aggregating RSS feeds, tracking specific content on blogs and microblogs and then sharing that content with others, all on one site. The blog/microblog search is powered by Twingly’s search engine which tracks close to 26 million blogs around the world. Here are a few screenshots to whet your appetite: Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Khosla Ventures Raises $1.1 Billion. It's For More Than Just Clean Tech. Top
Either Vinod Khosla has the magic or institutional investors are easing back into venture capital, or both. His Khosla Ventures raised $1.1 billion for two new funds, with about $800 million going to Khosla Ventures III and $275 million for a new seed fund. Taken together, the $1.1 billion is the biggest capital raise for a venture firm in two years, and if you count it as a first-time fund, it is the biggest capital raise in ten years. While these are technically the third and fourth funds managed by the firm, it is the first time Khosla Ventures is taking outside money. ( CALPERS , the retirement fund for California state employees, is the biggest new limited partner). Up until now, the capital primarily came from Khosla himself, who is a billionaire , a former star partner at Kleiner Perkins, and a co-founder of Sun Microsystems. He founded Khosla Ventures in 2004, and now the firm has eight partners. The firm also confirmed today that former Facebook CFO Gideon Yu is now a partner (you read it here first ), as is new hire James Kim from CMEA Capital. While Khosla is best known for funding clean tech startups these days, that is only about two thirds of his existing portfolio. Khosla Ventures is also an investor in Tapulous, Aliph/Jawbone, iLike, iSkoot, Slide, Rearden Commerce, RingCentral, and and Xobni. The new funds will continue to focus on both clean tech and IT in general. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
See Which Conferences Your Friends Are Attending With EventVue's 'Discover' Widget Top
EventVue , a company that builds online communities for conferences in order to improve conference networking amongst individuals, has launched a new product called Discover designed to help conference attendees find friends who are attending the same event. The goal of Discover is to work with different companies’ APIs, including LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Contacts, and Yahoo! Contacts, to help identify matches. Discover is a simple widget that conference organizers can install on their sites to showcase an event’s speakers, sponsors, and attendees. It’s currently in private beta testing, and only selected conferences are using the widget on their sites, according to a company blog post . It’s interesting to note that LinkedIn’s API is a private API that only a handful of companies get access to, and EventVue was one of the companies given access to the API. EventVue Co-Founder Josh Fraser says that the product can actually help get more attendees to visit conferences, explaining: “Over the past 2 years, we’ve heard from conference organizers that their biggest challenge is getting people to register for their conference. These conversations have had increased urgency in the past year as the economy has brought a lot of cuts to conference travel. We heard this enough times that we finally decided to do something about it. EventVue Discover helps conference organizers market their events and get more butts in seats. We learned from talking with organizers that the most effective way to market an event is to get attendees to encourage their friends to attend. Discover lets attendees see who they know is attending a conference from their social networks and makes it easy to invite their friends.” EventVue was part of the inaugural batch of startups under the TechStars incubator program, and offers direct integration with some of the largest online ticketing services Eventbrite , RegOnline and Acteva . Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Chrome OS: The Code Clues Are Out There Top
A working Chromium on Snow Leopard and Chrome Desktop Notifications are interesting, but let’s be honest, the real Chrome-related information everyone wants to know about is Chrome OS . And today there is news, as it looks like the OS may have just revealed itself, if only slightly, to the world. No, we’re not talking about those big icon screenshots , instead, this reveal is buried in code commits. As you can see in this directory , there are a few mentions of “chromeos.” A few days ago, a “brettw” with a @chromium.org address wrote the following: Move the compact navigation bar to the chromeos directory. Generalize the chromeos rules so we don’t have to list every file in the exclusions. Seeing as Chromium, while open source, is still very much a Google project, an @chromium.org email address would seem to suggest that this is a Google employee. A quick scan of what he’s been working on reveals that it’s all Chrome, all the time. A quick Google Search reveals him to be Brett Wilson , who is a software engineer at Google, and you can see him in action at Google I/O here . Just prior to that message, Wilson described the “compact navigation bar” in a bit more detail: Bugfixes and enhancements to the compact nav bar and the status area. This makes the compact navigation bar off by default at the request of Nicolas. It can be enabled with –compact-nav on the command line. It also adds different tab opening options when this feature is enabled. They are accessible from the app menu in the status area. The buttons now extend to the top of the screen for easier clicking. The status area is enabled whether or not the compact navigation bar is. I fixed the background so it will appear unselected when the window loses focus, and I fixed the time formatting to make the minutes always 2 digits. The Chrome button is now hooked up and just opens a tab to a placeholder page. There’s some interesting stuff in there. It would seem that Chrome OS may feature some kind of compact navigation bar that has various tab-opening options (including clicking on the “Chrome button”). It would appear that there’s an app menu of some kind in something known as the “status area” which apparently contains the current time. Now, certainly this stuff could be related to a new version of Chrome being worked on and not Chrome OS. But remember the latest update above (”Move the compact navigation bar to the chromeos directory”) and then take a look at the one that came right before it: Add a first attempt at a compact location bar and a status bar. The status bar contains a clock, an application menu, and a non-working battery indicator. The compact location bar can be toggled by COMPACT_NAV_BAR in browser_window_gtk.cc So this status bar apparently has a clock, and application menu, and a battery indicator. Certainly, that all reeks of Chrome OS rather than Chrome, the web browser. I’m just speculating here, but it seems reasonable to assume that this status bar may be the name of the main upper dock for Chrome OS. It’s hard to know for sure, and it’s even harder to try to dig through the Chromium.org directories for more information, given all the code names and nested directories. Here’s a bit more of what I dug up: This page talks about cookies as they are related to Chrome OS. Of note: [Chrome OS] Adds support for injecting Corp cookies at startup To support single-sign-on for Chrome OS, we need a way to inject cookies into Chrome. Eventually, I want to replace this pipe-reading with an appropriate usage of DBus, but Chrome OS isn’t there yet. So yes, it would appear that work is well underway on Chrome OS, but it “isn’t there yet.” Update : As commenter Daniel Gasienica points out, Chris Messina did some digging of his own yesterday and seems to have found an area on Google’s servers where Chrome OS could be getting developed. Right now you get a “403 Forbidden”, meaning something is there. [thanks Sai ] [photo: Warner Brothers] Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
The Mobile Payments Rivalry Heats Up Top
Mobile payments for micro-transactions on the web are catching wind and there are several players in the space vying for the top spot in the field. Today, Boku, a recently launched mobile payments conglomorate of sorts, is announcing a slew of new customer acquisitions as well as details of its international expansion. Boku, which acquired competitors Paymo and Mobillcash and raised $13 million in Series A funding back in June, doesn't require users to have a credit card or bank account to make a micropayment. Users enter their cell phone number on the site, reply to a text message and then all virtual charges are automatically charged to the user's monthly cell phone bill. As we’ve said in the past, it’s ridiculously easy. Because of its acquisition of Paymo and Mobillcash, systems that had significant international reach, BOKU gained a strong base of users around the world. Today’s announcement adds availability of the payment service in Finland, Indonesia, Slovenia and Taiwan, bringing the company's global reach to 56 countries. Boku’s marketing chief Ron Hirson tell us that they are seeing a strong foothold in Southeast Asia and will be expanding to the Phillipines within a few weeks. Boku has also added a number of online gaming sites, social network applications and the social networks themselves over the past few months, including Playfish, HitGrab and Gambit. Boku says that currently they have over 1000 customers that use its mobile payments platform. So far, Boku has powered 6.5 million online mobile transactions. But competition is stiff in this field and one competitor in particular, Zong, has also witnessed strong growth over the past few months. Most recently, Zong was chosen to test a pilot program for mobile payments for Facebook’s virtual currency, Credits. While Zong may not have had the organic international base that Boku has (Zong is available in 19 countries), this partnership is sure to help Zong’s global reach thanks to Facebook’s ever growing presence and popularity around the world. Zong also reached a big milestone a few weeks after processing mobile payments for 10 million unique users in 2009. However, the potential obstacle to Boku, Zong and other mobile payments platforms are the high fees that mobile carriers charge to the payment systems (which are then passed on to the consumer). Boku told us on June that different cell phone carriers charge varying fees that range between 10% to 50% of the purchase price, which is a hefty amount in transaction fees. But if mobile carriers lower their fees, mobile payments have the potential to be the go-to way to pay for microtransactions. David Marcus, CEO of Zong, says that many U.S. and European carriers that Zong works with are contemplating reducing these fees by building large-scale models to process payments that would in turn lessen the pressure on startups like Zong and Boku as well as the applications and social networks using the systems. Marcus feels confident that if this does happen, the sky is the limit with mobile payments. Regardless, as shown by growth witnessed by both Boku and Zong, mobile payments are catching on and attracting the attention of some of technology’s giants, like Facebook. And of course the rivalry and ensuing competition between the two companies could continue to spur further innovation and growth. It will certainly be fascinating to see which startup comes out ahead. Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Another Popular Developer Lays The Smack Down On Apple's App Store Top
Another day, another story of Apple’s ridiculous App Store approval policies gone awry. Joe Stump , the former lead architect for Digg who is well known in the developer community, has posted an entirely NSFW rant to his blog that condemns Apple for preventing a key update to his application from going live for over six weeks. Stump’s language is quite colorful so I’m not going to quote it extensively, but be sure to read his full blog post . In the post, Stump outlines a problem that he had with Chess Wars , the Facebook Connect-enabled chess game that came out in July. After catching a show-stopping bug soon after the initial release, his company Blunder Move promptly issued an update. Soon thereafter they noticed another bug, which they quickly released a fix for. Unfortunately, this second update has sat in App Store purgatory for many weeks now, and Apple has gone silent on when it will be approved. Stump also describes his efforts to get his friends inside Apple to help his cause, going on to say that they’ve been able to do basically nothing other than tell him to contact Apple’s unhelpful team of app reviewers. Even once the update is approved, the app will have to endure the 1-star reviews it has received without any way to reverse them. Here’s how Stump closes out the blog post: To our users affected by this, I'm truly sorry. There's absolutely nothing I can do about your horrible user experience and, as a developer who loves his users, nothing pains me more. To Apple, please kindly extend the world class customer service I'm so accustomed to as an Apple fanboy to your developers. Update : Stump tells us that an Apple representative called him this morning (no doubt prompted by his blog post) to say that Chess Wars features a chat interface that looks too much like the native iPhone SMS client. This, of course, is totally ridiculous, as a number of other apps feature chat interfaces that look nearly identical (below I’ve embedded screenshots of Chess Wars and Facebook’s app, which was approved last week). Other notable developers to have criticized the App Store’s policies include Panic co-founder Steven Frank , and Joe Hewitt , who is charged with building the enormously popular Facebook iPhone app . Crunch Network : CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 

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