The latest from TechCrunch
- Vlado Herman Steps Up As New Yelp CFO
- Copia Plans Low-Cost 7″ And 10″ Tablets As Well As E-Ink Devices
- In April, Apple Ditched Google And Skyhook In Favor Of Its Own Location Databases
- Researchers: Android Wallpaper App Shows "No Evidence Of Malicious Behavior"
- Google's Latest Search Story Makes Having A Baby Seem Really Depressing
| Vlado Herman Steps Up As New Yelp CFO | Top |
| Former Yelp VP of Finance/Administration Vlado Herman takes a step up the ladder and becomes, as of today, Yelp’s Chief Financial Officer. The Yelp Blog introduces his promotion with an adorable poem: Faster than BP's falling share price. More powerful than a bull market on steroids. Able to leap across the Atlantic in a single bound. Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s our new CFO! Founded by former PayPal employees Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons in 2004, Yelp has recently tried to cash in on the GroupOn craze by offering local deals, while Google is attempting to take the wind out of Yelp’s sails with its new Places application. Photo: Yelp Blog CrunchBase Information Yelp Vlado Herman Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Copia Plans Low-Cost 7″ And 10″ Tablets As Well As E-Ink Devices | Top |
| Just a couple hours ago, news broke of the $99 Copia Wave5 e-reader , or tablet, or whatever you want to call a 5″ LCD-based device focused on reading. That isn’t the extent of the lineup, however: Copia has two more LCD-based tablets coming out soon, as well as two E-ink-based readers with Kindle-esque designs. As they’ve said since their CES debut, the draw is supposed to be their unique social platform , which allows a community of readers to exchange reviews, recommendations, and so on — and although it will start as an exclusive to Copia-branded devices, they’re trying to go OEM and make the Copia service the premier social layer for e-books. Continue reading… | |
| In April, Apple Ditched Google And Skyhook In Favor Of Its Own Location Databases | Top |
| As you’re undoubtedly aware, location is one of the hottest fields out there right now. Startups, services, devices, and advertisers are all hovering around it. As you’re also likely well aware, Apple likes to be in control of their own devices. So it should come as no surprise to hear that Apple is moving to be in complete of their own location database. Back in June, Apple changed its privacy policy to reflect some of the newer things they were doing with regard to location. This worried some people — including two U.S. Congressmen who sent a letter to Apple asking about the change. A couple weeks ago, Apple responded to that inquiry with a letter from Apple’s general counsel, Bruce Sewell. The overall main points of that letter have already been covered quite a bit (basically, none of the data Apple collects is linked to a specific user or device and no data is shared without consent). But buried on page 5 of the 13-page letter is a bit of information that’s rather interesting. Here’s the passage (highlights are mine): To provide the high quality products and services that its customers demand, Apple must have access to comprehensive location-based information. For devices running iPhone OS versions 1.1.3 to 3.1, Apple relied on (and still relies on) databases maintained by Google and Skyhook Wireless (“Skyhook”) to provide location-based services. Beginning with the iPhone OS version 3.2 released in April 2010, Apple relies on its own databases to provide location-based services and for diagnostic purposes . These databases must be updated continuously to account for, among other things, the ever-changing physical landscape, more innovative uses of mobile technology, and the increasing number of Apple’s customers. Apple has always taken great care to protect the privacy of its customers. In other words, since iPhone OS 3.2 (since renamed “iOS”) which shipped on the iPad, and continuing with the new iOS 4, Apple is now in complete control of the location services on the iPhone (and iPad/iPod touch). Previously, Apple relied on the location information from Skyhook and Google. But now they have built their own databases to be able to drop those guys going forward (though, as they note, the older iOSes still use that outside data). As I said, this continues Apple’s long tradition of wanting to have complete control over their products by developing everything they need in-house. They didn’t have the capabilities to do that with location services when the iPhone launched. Now, apparently, they do. When reached for comment, Skyhook wouldn’t specifically talk about their relationship with Apple, but they did say that “ everyone who has a platform wants to own as much of the location stack as possible. Location data is going the be huge and owning it is going to be the next big war in mobile. “ It has to be particularly nice for Apple to be able to ditch Google in this regard. While Google helped Apple build the Maps application on the iPhone, the relationship between the two has obviously changed over the years. With Apple now making its move into mobile advertising with iAds, clearly they didn’t want to be sending or receiving all the location information for all of their millions of devices from what is now a chief rival. And Google is making fast moves to beef up its mobile location-based ads , as well. It will also be interesting to see what, if anything, this means for the Maps application on the iPhone and iPad. Earlier this month, Apple bought Poly9 , makers of a 3D mapping software. And last year, they bought Placebase , another map-maker. Both of those purchases were likely for their talent, rather than the products — it would seem as if Apple is moving in the direction of having its own mapping products. If they do that, clearly they’re going to want their own location databases as well. And now they have just that. One thing a lot of services such as Google have been working on recently is building up their place databases . It’s not clear if Apple will be building their own one of those as well — but I wouldn’t bet against it. This also may signal Apple eventually baking in location to some of their other apps — like Contacts. While I suspect they wouldn’t do this in a way that would directly compete with all the third-party location startups out there, it could be something along the lines of being able to tell where family members are at all times (provided they opt-in, of course). And, of course, Apple likes to tout their “Find My iPhone” feature, which is all about location. It’s perhaps the perfect example of how Apple is able to tell where any iPhone (or iPad) is at anytime, anywhere. It makes sense to try to fully control that information, and all the data surrounding it. CrunchBase Information Apple Google Skyhook Wireless iPhone Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Researchers: Android Wallpaper App Shows "No Evidence Of Malicious Behavior" | Top |
| Yesterday, mobile security firm Lookout announced at the Black Hat security conference that it had discovered a seemingly benign wallpaper application for Android that had been downloaded millions of times — and allegedly harvested user data like text messages and browsing history, which was being sent to servers in China. At least, that’s what was reported . Turns out, it looks like the press jumped the gun on reporting this as a major security issue, and the company has posted a clarification to its blog. According to the post, while there is something suspicious going on here, the data these applications are accessing is not nearly as sensitive as some of the initial reports would have you believe (it isn’t grabbing your text messages and browsing history). The apps are apparently sending some potentially sensitive data like your subscriber identifier, but even then, the Lookout team says that there is no concrete evidence of malicious behavior: The data included the device's phone number, subscriber identifier (e.g. IMSI), and the currently entered voicemail number on the phone (see below for technical details). While this sort of data collection from a wallpaper application is certainly suspicious, there's no evidence of malicious behavior. There have been cases in the past on other mobile platforms where well-intentioned developers are simply over-zealous in their data gathering, without having malicious intent. For its part, Google says that it has “suspended this application while we investigate further”. CrunchBase Information Android Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Google's Latest Search Story Makes Having A Baby Seem Really Depressing | Top |
| Launched during this year’s Super Bowl with its inaugural “Parisian Love,” Google’s Search Stories campaign is meticulously engineered to be relatable and tug at your heartstrings. Their latest offering, “New Baby,” portrays the joys and costs of parenting a little too well, heavy on the latter. So you’re clueless, your wife is pregnant and crazy and you have to sell your precious vinyl collection to be able to afford twins, which are an “expensive proposition”? And on top of it all you have to buy a minivan (and sell the Porsche presumably)! If I was that dad I’d be searching for “how to get a vasectomy” instead of “how soon can we try again?” CrunchBase Information Google Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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