Friday, December 31, 2010

Y! Alert: TechCrunch

Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from TechCrunch

WakeMate Warns Users Of Major Safety Issue With Product After One Bursts Into Flames Top
It was only days ago that we wrote that after nearly a year of delays, the first WakeMate units were finally shipping to customers . And now there’s some more bad news — really bad. Some of the initial units are apparently bursting into flames because of any issue with the USB charger included. Repeat: Do not use the USB charger included with the shipping WakeMate units. The company has just sent out the following notice to customers: Hello WakeMate Customer, We have just been alerted to a safety issue with our product. The black USB charger bricks that have been included with the product are defective. Do not use them. The USB chargers were sourced through a Chinese vendor. We paid to have the proper certification and safety tests performed here in the U.S. for the chargers. However, tonight we were informed by a customer of a safety incident with the black USB chargers. Therefore, effective immediately we are recalling ALL USB charger bricks and informing our customers that it is not safe to use these USB chargers to charge your WakeMate. We will continue to look into the situation but needed to email you immediately to ensure that you stop using and unplug the included Black USB Power Bricks. We are extremely sorry that we sent a product containing defective components. However, we also want to stress that this issue is with the chargers only, and not with the WakeMate itself. It is still safe to use the included USB cable to charge the WakeMate, and it is safe to wear the WakeMate while sleeping. I sincerely apologize for this mishap on our part. We are doing everything we can to prevent any further incidents with the USB charger bricks. If you have any questions do not hesitate to contact me. Sincerely, Arun Gupta CEO, Perfect Third Inc. While the notice isn’t specific about what the exact problem is, there is at least one report out there of a unit catching on fire. Jason Toff, a Googler, sent out this tweet tonight: WARNING: my @WakeMate just burnt into flames, nearly catching my bed on fire. Do NOT use. Video of it afterward:  http://twitvid.com/UBBWC As you can see in Toff’s linked video, this looks really bad. He followed up to say he was fine, but that he was lucky he was around or his home would be on fire right now. Obviously, this is yet more bad news for WakeMate, but they seem to have done the right thing in alerting customers as quickly as possible. It’s not yet clear if this is the only incident or if there have been others. Either way, WakeMate clearly feels this potentially won’t be an isolated problem. Again, just to be clear, they’re saying the product itself is still safe, it’s just the black USB power adapter that is apparently defective. And if that’s the case, they shouldn’t have to do a full product recall — hopefully they’ll just have to send new USB adapters to all customers. The company says they’re still looking into the situation. Update : There’s a bit more info in the Hacker News thread on the issue, including the company answering questions (they are Y Combinator-backed). Of note, the company says: yes the batteries are safe. we believe that the chargers are spitting out a noisy electrical signal, which is causing the battery charger IC on the WakeMate to overheat, thus causing the problem. We have only seen any incidence when the unit is plugged into the black USB charger bricks we shipped with. To date we have logged over 20000 hours of sleep on our system, so we’re certain that sleeping with the Wakemate is safe, and that the batteries on the WakeMates are safe as well. This is in addition to the testing and certification we had done on the unit as well before we began shipping units. and: We sent this email tonight within an hour of hearing about the first issue. One of our goals as a company is to increase people’s quality of life — starting with sleep. It was immediately apparent to us we had to tell our customers, especially if their safety was at all at risk. CrunchBase Information WakeMate Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Addoway Is Like eBay With A Social Streak Top
If you’ve ever gone shopping on eBay, you know how important seller ratings can be — take a stab with someone who has less than a 90-something approval rating, and you’re testing your luck. And even when you’ve found someone with a satisfactory rating, the descriptions left by other buyers tend to be mostly useless ( A++++ , anyone?), which makes the whole thing feel a little risky regardless. Oh, and sellers can always get scammed by buyers, which makes it even more fun. Addoway is an e-commerce site that looks to help reduce these feelings of anxiety by using Facebook Connect to help you find sellers that your friends have had good experiences dealing with in the past. The site launched eight months ago, and is currently drawing 90,000 uniques a month. The premise is simple: when you run a search on Addoway for whatever it is you’re looking to buy (say, an Xbox), the site will let you sort listings by your social connections. If you know someone who has interacted with a certain seller before, then they’ll show up at the top — and you can talk to your friends about their experience with that seller if you’re still hesitant. Of course, in order for these social connections to be of any use you need to actually know people who are using the site to either buy or sell things. And right now it’s pretty unlikely — even if you have a few hundred friends, the odds that one of them is using Addoway to sell the item you’re looking for is very low. CEO Fredrick Nijm agrees that it’s unlikely that the social connections will be much help at this point, but he believes that if the site grows in popularity, it will become much more useful. For the nearer-term, Addoway has a back-up plan in place to help make shoppers more comfortable: very transparent seller listings. The site invites sellers to link up their blogs, Amazon accounts, eBay seller profiles, and YouTube videos, allowing visitors to quickly get a snapshot of who they are. Granted, reading someone’s blog or watching their videos doesn’t necessarily help you determine if they’re a reputable seller, but this kind of transparency can still potentially help instill a greater sense of trust. Maybe. So far the site has over 400,000 listings, most of which have been sucked in from eBay (Addoway lets sellers connect with their eBay, Etsy, and Bonanza accounts). Nijm declined to say how many active sellers the site has, but says that most of them (including those who have linked their eBay accounts) are still active. The site makes money by offering a premium account to sellers for $8.95 per month that gives them prominent placement in search results and Addoway’s social media presences. In the future the site will also add transaction fees, though existing users will have a window where they won’t have to pay them. This is a very difficult market to crack into, especially given how much traction Addoway will need for its social connections to become useful, and Nijm knows it. Still, he says that this is the only service that uses Facebook Connect to help buyers pick out reputable sellers (as opposed to using it for product recommendations, the way Amazon does), and he says that Addoway has seen significant growth over the last several months, going from 60,000 uniques a couple of months ago to 90,000 today. CrunchBase Information Addoway Information provided by CrunchBase
 
OpenInvo: A Marketplace For Innovation Top
Have a great idea, but don’t have the time or money to actually bring it to market? A new startup called OpenInvo wants to help you turn it into a nice chunk of change by selling it to existing businesses that are looking for an extra dose of innovation. Now, there are other platforms for sharing business ideas — you may be familiar with Kickstarter , which has gotten attention for projects like the iPod Wristwatch . But Kickstarter is for people who want to bring their ideas to fruition and just need funding — OpenInvo is for people who have an idea and are willing to put the time in to flesh it out on paper, but don’t want to have to deal with actually starting a company. For most users, the setup is pretty simple: you log into the site, agree to a fairly lengthy legal document, and then outline your ideas using diagrams and other supplementary material as necessary. Established businesses eager for some outside inspiration can then come along and browse through OpenInvo’s directory of ideas (after paying for access, of course). At this point the tools for browsing this directory are still fairly nascent, but founder Emily Lutzker says that the company plans to build it out once it raises additional capital. So how much can you expect to make should a business decide it likes one of your ideas? This varies a lot — Lutzker says that the service gauges a variety of factors, like the potential market size, how much work you’ve put into fleshing out your idea, and whether or not there’s an existing relevant patent in order to establish a fair price. But she says the range could be anywhere from $5,000 to $100,000. There’s also an option for the idea creator to collect a percentage of revenues generated by the idea, though the purchasing business would obviously have to agree to those terms. There are a lot of IP issues involved here, and Lutzker says that the site has been vetted by lawyers to make sure that things are up to snuff. New idea submitters have to agree to an online contract indicating that they accept OpenInvo’s terms, and companies that wish to browse the ideas have to sign a contract of their own. To help prevent abuse (for example, companies simply taking ideas without paying their creators), OpenInvo tracks each page that a business visits. OpenInvo is still in a very early state. Lutzker says that the service has some large companies who are eager to browse through the site’s directory, but that the service is waiting for the marketplace to fill out with more submissions before it opens the floodgates to these ‘Idea Seekers’. If those submissions don’t come then the service is obviously in trouble, so it’s doing what it can to get the word out. In the future, OpenInvo will also flesh out its collaboration tools, and it will eventually offer real-time brainstorming sessions that businesses can use as online focus tests. There are plenty of other online platforms for sharing ideas, including Kickstarter and Quirky . The latter has its community vote on submitted ideas, and it brings them to market with the original creator getting a cut of the proceeds. There’s also Innocentive , which sets out to solve ‘problems that really matter’. CrunchBase Information OpenInvo Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Centro Media Rakes In $22.5 Million Top
According to an SEC filing today, the Chicago based Centro has just raised a whopping $22.5 million (rounded up) in equity only funding. Listed on the SEC form are Centro CEO Shawn Riegsecker and FTV Capita l Partner Eric Byunn as Director. Centro is a digital media and technology services company founded in 2001, serving over 350 ad agencies world wide . The company’s recently launched platform Transis automates and centralizes the media buying and selling process so agencies can save time and money. This looks to be the first major funding round for Centro; The company had also raised a much smaller $276,247 round back when it was called Intergent. CrunchBase Information Centro Information provided by CrunchBase
 
See What Went Popular And When With Rrrewind Top
Developer Roberto Martinez wanted an easy way to see what was popular on any given social content site on any given day so he built Rrrewind , which lets you see what was hot on Delicious, Digg, Hacker News, Reddit, Hulu, Yahoo Videos, YouTube, Dribbble, Flickr, Amazon and Yahoo Buzz for any day in 2010 and some in 2009. Like a snapshot in virality or a Popurls with a history focus, Rrrewind allows you to go back in time and see an archive of the most viewed items on the Internet. Says Martinez, “It is NOT a social, local, deal related, disruptive app, just a damn useful site that let you go back in time and see what was popular on some sites. I built it because I hate to miss hot stuff on Delicious (snif), Hacker News, etc.” Martinez has been collecting information for the site since 2009 but finally got around to building it over this holiday season. My favorite part is the sites that include visuals, like what went popular on the design community Dribbble and Flickr. It seems to be harder to aggregate the video content and the Hulu option seems to be particularly iffy. Martinez plans on adding a calendar option (right now you can use the archives link) and more music services like iTunes and Last.fm as well as Google and Twitter search trends. As one Hacker News commenter pointed out , the theme of  “This day in history” has appeared in print, then radio, then on birthday cards, then television, and now on the Internet, “If you look, you’ll find what you seek pretty much everywhere.” CrunchBase Information Rrrewind Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Image Space Media Raises $1 Million For In-Image Ad Platform Top
TechCrunch50 demopit company Image Space Media (formerly Picad Media ) has raised $1 million in new funding according to an SEC filing. ISM’s ad network, which recently launched an analytics offering and a self service tool, helps publishers monetize images on their websites with ad overlays. Its proprietary technology allows for audience targeting and matches ads to the most appropriate images available. With AdStart, advertisers can now create text based ads on both a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-thousand (CPM) impression level. Once the advertiser creates their text-based ad campaign, they set their bid price and fund their account using a credit card or PayPal with a minimum of $5.00 for prepaid accounts. The ads immediately begin running as overlays on contextually relevant images across the Image Space Media Network. The startup raised $2.9 million in funding earlier this year from New Atlantic Ventures, Ridgeline Capital, and Michael Gordon and brought on a new CEO last year, Jesse Chenard, who Tung actually met at TechCrunch50 in 2008. Image Space Media faces competition from GumGum and others. We’ve reached out to the startup for confirmation and will update when we hear back. UPDATE The company’s founder Kevin Tung has confirmed that ISM raised another round from existing investors in advance of a planned Series B round in 2011. CrunchBase Information Image Space Media Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Who Gives A Tweet: MIT Researchers Build A "Hot Or Not" For Twitter Top
Because everything eventually becomes an academic field (I’m still waiting for “Internet” to become a major), researchers from MIT, University of Southampton and Georgia Institute of Technology have teamed up to build Who Gives A Tweet , a Twitter app that allows users to anonymously rate their friends’ and strangers’ tweets in order gain more insight into status update perception. Kind of like Hot Or Not, but for tweets. While plenty of apps like Twitalyzer and Twitter Grader try to measure your social media engagement whatever that means, the Who Gives A Tweet study attempts to parse what is valuable and not so valuable about microblogging content. Says Michael Bernstein, PhD student at MIT, “Analysing the negatively rated tweets, and the consensus that forms around them, will help us understand the emerging approved or accepted norms in these new forms of online communication.” Aside from serving up feedback from your friends, the app also gives you tweet feedback from strangers via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Thus far I have been rated by two people on my “Caveat: I have absolutely no interest in anything that combines New Year’s resolutions and social media” tweet from yesterday. While one person found it “Sort of funny” another said “This person has no interest in New year’s resolutions and social media, and I have no interest in this tweet.” Ouch. Says Twitter app store founder Laura Fitton, “It gets right to everybody’s core uncertainties about Twitter, ‘Am I doing it right?’ ‘Am I boring?’ You can find Who Gives A Tweet in the Twitter app store here. CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Xpert Financial Is About To Fly Out Of Stealth With A New Way To Trade Private Shares, And SEC Approval Top
Just as the Securities and Exchange Commission is starting to take a closer look at the increasing amount of trading in private company stock, a new startup that’s been in stealth mode since August, 2009 is preparing to launch another way to trade private shares. The company is Xpert Financial which, through its registered subsidiary, Xpert Securities, brings to the table a tacit stamp of approval from the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority ( FINRA ), or at least approval to begin operations as an alternative trading system ( ATS ). Existing secondary markets for private shares such as SharesPost and SecondMarket do not have the same standing in the eyes of the SEC, although it is not clear how much that matters at this point. Xpert Financial will operate an electronic trading platform for private company shares. It is a registered broker-dealer with FINRA and it recently got approval from the SEC to run an alternative trading platform. Xpert Financial will be the first ATS approved for private stock sales. More common alternative trading systems are ECNs, or Electronic Communication Networks, for publicly traded securities. As an ATS, Expert Financial cannot call itself an exchange, which is why it changed its name from Xchange. In contrast to “bulletin boards and phone-bank brokerages that have positioned themselves as stock exchanges,” as the company calls its competitors, Xpert Financial will be a completely automated, electronic trading system. It will also work with the companies whose shares trade on its ATS to solicit their approval (SecondMarket and SharesPost work with shareholders, not necessarily with the companies). Xpert will also provide a way for companies to share financial information with prospective investors. More disclosure would certainly be welcome in this opaque corner or the financial markets. The company is backed by angel investors including Tim Draper, who invested personally. Of course, just because Xpert Financial has permission to operate as an ATS by the SEC that doesn’t mean that companies whose shares trade there wil be immune from SEC scrutiny. As these private trading systems bring more liquidity to secondary markets, the number of shareholders for any given company will increase and the greater chance there will be that a company will gain more than 500 shareholders. Once that happens, the SEC can require full financial disclosure just like a publicly traded company. Update : A SecondMarket spokesperson notes: “SecondMarket is a registered broker-dealer, and we are fully regulated by both FINRA and the SEC. Also, working with the private companies is a critical aspect of our business model.” The difference is that it is not an ATS, and Xpert Financial is already trying to use that distinction in its marketing against the established players. CrunchBase Information Xpert Financial SecondMarket SharesPost Information provided by CrunchBase
 
NookColor is Barnes & Noble's Top Seller This Holiday Top
In a few short weeks, the NookColor sold “nearly a million units,” at least according to B&N, making it the company’s best-selling product. Launched in October, the NookColor is a hackable Android tablet originally designed to only read B&N’s line of ebooks and play a few games. Since its launch, however, it’s become a hacker’s plaything and a popular alternative to the do-it-all iPad . In short, the NookColor could be B&N’s ultimate weapon against Kindle hedgemony and has definitely put them firmly in the ereader race. Full PR after the jump. Read more…
 
Groupon Insiders Take $345 Million Off The Table In Latest Funding Round Top
As we first reported last night, Groupon has already closed $500 million of a whopping $950 million funding round. Now the SEC filing is out showing that the first sale occurred on December 17, and that there is still $450 million worth of securities available to be sold in the current round. The new round gives Groupon a valuation of $4.75 billion . We noted that most of the proceeds of the round is going back to founders and existing shareholders, with DST leading the round (Fidelity and Morgan Stanley also participated). Now we know exactly how much. The filing specifies that $345 million of the proceeds (from the $500 million raised) will go directly to “executive officers, directors or promoters.” It also notes that a “portion of the gross proceeds will be used to pay for shares repurchased by the Issuer in a tender offer for shares held by, among others, certain of the persons named” in the filing. What that means is that Groupon itself will use some of the money it is raising to buy back shares from the founders or other shareholders. The persons named are founders Andrew Mason, Eric Lefkofsky, and Brad Keywell, as well as the other board members (John Walter, Jason Fried, Ted Leonsis, Peter Barris, Harry Weller, and Kevin Efrusy). Somebody also pocketed a $7.5 million “finder’s fee” for helping to put the deal together. This round is largely a liquidity event for existing shareholders since most of the capital raised won’t be plowed back into the business. However, Groupon is producing so much cash on its own (with annualized revenues rumored to be between $1 billion and $2 billion) that the business can fund expansion from its own cash flows. CrunchBase Information Groupon Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Pew Shows 65% Of People Pay For Digital Content; Mostly Music, Software, And Mobile Apps Top
The Pew Internet organization put out results of a survey on how many people pay for digital content online. The study found that 65 percent of people online have paid to download some form of digital content or for a subscription to a digital media service. The survey excluded physical goods bought online and was focussed only on digital content such as music, software, news, and other online or electronic publications. For those who do spend money online on digital media, most spend between $1 and $10 a month, with 68 percent spending less than $30 a month. (You can see the distribution of amount spend in the chart above). The two kinds of digital goods people are most willing to pay for by far are music and software. One third of respondents (33 percent) say they have paid for either digital music or software online. And 21 percent have paid for mobile apps. So if you combine mobile apps and other forms of software, that is the largest single category even accounting for overlap in the numbers. Paying for digital games comes in fourth at 19 percent. What about digital newspapers or magazines behind paywalls or for sale for tablets like the iPad? A respectable 18 percent of respondents say they have paid for news or other reports online. That even beats out the 16 percent who have paid for movies or TV shows. Media companies will love that stat. And ebooks? Only 10 percent have bothered to pay for those. Here is the full breakdown: 33% of internet users have paid for digital music online 33% have paid for software 21% have paid for apps for their cell phones or tablet computers 19% have paid for digital games 18% have paid for digital newspaper, magazine, or journal articles or reports 16% have paid for videos, movies, or TV shows 15% have paid for ringtones 12% have paid for digital photos 11% have paid for members-only premium content from a website that has other free material on it 10% have paid for e-books 7% have paid for podcasts 5% have paid for tools or materials to use in video or computer games 5% have paid for "cheats or codes" to help them in video games 5% have paid to access particular websites such as online dating sites or services 2% have paid for adult content
 
WPP Buys Obama's Campaign Agency Blue State Digital Top
Blue State Digital, the communications firm responsible for coordinating President Barack Obama’s online fundraising and social networking campaigns in the 2008 election, has been acquired by advertising giant WPP. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Blue State Digital is a digital agency that helps form online strategy, and advocacy, membership and fundraising campaigns for nonprofits, educational and cultural institutions, political campaigns and corporate brands. According to a release, Blue State Digital’s revenue has grown more than 30% per year since its founding in 2004 (and the company’s strategy and technology has helped raise $800 million to date). Blue State Digital’s clients include HBO, The American Red Cross, Harvard University and AT&T. One factor that made BSD appealing to WPP is its proprietary technology suite that integrates tools for online fundraising, advocacy, social networking, constituency development, email marketing and content management. The company also consults on web design and strategic communications. CrunchBase Information WPP Information provided by CrunchBase
 
How Are M&M's Made? – And Other Weird Interview Questions From 2010 Top
Glassdoor.com , a venture-backed online career and workplace community, has self-reportedly culled through tens of thousands interview questions that job seekers have shared on the site in 2010, and selected a number of weird ones. Some of them are pretty bizarre, some are downright hilarious. Go to the Glassdoor blog for the top 25 oddball interview questions, but below are the ones from technology companies, since I reckon you’d be most interested in those. Don’t forget to list some grueling interview questions you’ve had to answer in your career in the comment section! "How many basketballs can you fit in this room?" – asked at Google . "If you could be any superhero, who would it be?" – asked at AT&T . "Given the numbers 1 to 1000, what is the minimum numbers guesses needed to find a specific number if you are given the hint "higher" or "lower" for each guess you make?" – asked at Facebook . "If you had 5,623 participants in a tournament, how many games would need to be played to determine the winner?" – asked at Amazon . "There are three boxes, one contains only apples, one contains only oranges, and one contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been incorrectly labeled such that no label identifies the actual contents of the box it labels. Opening just one box, and without looking in the box, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can you immediately label all of the boxes correctly?" – asked at Apple . "How do you weigh an elephant without using a weigh machine?" – asked at IBM . "You have 8 pennies, 7 weight the same, one weighs less. You also have a judges scale. Find the one that weighs less in less than 3 steps." – asked at Intel . "How many bottles of beer are drank in the city over the week?" – asked at The Nielsen Company . Pro tip, you can view the answers given by job seekers for the listed interview questions as well. Some of them are quite amusing as well. Also check out Glassdoor's List of Naughty and Nice CEOs (TCTV). Alright, Monthy Python time (thanks, commenter): CrunchBase Information Glassdoor Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Three Words: Simple, Fun, Viral Top
Making the rounds on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr right now is Three Words , a super simple but mighty fun application created by teen tinkerer Mark Bao . What does it do? Well, it tells you who you are in three words , at least according to the people that visit that Web page, that is. When you first go to the site, you can sign up through Facebook Connect, and you’ll get a link that looks like this: http://threewords.me/robinwauters . On that page, people can describe you in – you guessed it – three words, and you can even customize your page with a personal background and avatar if you’re into that. On Hacker News , meanwhile, Bao explains how he built the app, and asked the community what he should do now. Evidently, Bao also took to Quora , where he explained how the simple Web app went from a simple link on Facebook to a viral machine. He says the biggest growth so far has come from Twitter and Tumblr, and also from Facebook, and that he’s built the app specifically to spread virally by incorporating a low enough barrier to entry as well as a mechanism to entice people who describe other people to make a Three Words page for themselves too. And of course, everyone knows people love to know what other people think of them (you can do so anonymously on Three Words, by the way, so go wild on my profile if you wish). Funnily enough, he could easily make the service even more viral, in my opinion, by simply adding some buttons so people can easily spread their custom profile link to various social networking services once they’ve signed up. Lets hope the site stays in the air long enough for you to try it out – there are definitely some scaling issues that need to be resolved.
 
Skype's New App Brings Video Chat To The iPhone, iPad And iPod Touch Top
We’ve been hearing reports that Skype is debuting a mobile video chat service and D-Day has arrived. The company is launching a brand new version of its iPhone app that includes the ability to turn on video in any Skype chat. The beauty of the app is that it brings free video calling to iPhone 3G devices, iPad and iPod Touch, all of which couldn’t run Apple’s video calling feature Facetime (the feature only works with iPhone 4 devices and Mac computers). Of course, iPad owners won’t be able to initiate a video call, but these users can receive any video chats from contacts. Skype also says that the app allows users to video chat over both 3G and WiFi networks, allowing users to access the feature across a variety of connections. Skype’s iPhone app, which was one of the top five free iPhone apps in 2010, allows users to simply turn on the video feature to activate video chat. iPhone 4 users have the ability to use either the front facing camera or the back camera. The new version of the iPhone app is compatible with the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and 4th generation iPod touch with i0S 4.0 or above. Users can receive video chat on the 3rd generation iPod touch and iPad. Calls can also be made between devices using the new Skype for iPhone app and desktops including Skype for Windows, Skype for Mac, Skype for Linux and ASUS Videophone. Rick Osterloh, VP of Consumer Products for Skype, tells us that the company has been working for awhile to develop video capability in the app. With video calling representing 40 percent of all Skype calls, Osterloh says that adding the functionality made sense to expand Skype’s use. “Mobile is going to be big for Skype,” says Osterloh. “We are making sure Skype is with you wherever you are and mobile will be the place where that happens as smartphones get more powerful.” Osterloh adds that we can expect more mobile offerings in the near future, which seems to imply that video calling could be coming to its Android app as well. And while this new app does seem to compete with Apple’s Facetime, Osterloh is quick to add that Apple has been a “great partner” in the development of the new build of iPhone app (probably because Apple actually approved the app). This has been a tumultuous few weeks for Skype, which suffered a massive outage last week affecting tens of millions os users. Today, the company’s CIO Lars Rabbe revealed the causes behind the outage, which included a bug in the Skype for Windows client. And earlier this week, the company was hit with a patent infringement suit. Skype says that the release of the app was purposely made just prior to New Year’s, which is historically Skype’s biggest video calling day of the year (measured in calling minutes). 2011 should be a big year for Skype, as the company prepares for an IPO in the next year. With this event looming ahead, Skype has been working to expand usage of its service through enterprise offerings and new product development (i.e. Facebook integration ). And we know Skype is going to make a big push to the cloud in 2011, possibly launching a web-based service early in the year. Besides for general consumer use, video calling could come in useful for Skype’s enterprise clients. The new feature definitely makes the technology a more compelling solution for conferencing purposes. And Osterloh made it pretty clear that mobile will also be a part of the company’s strategy to expand its userbase (Skype has an average 25 million consumers using the service at any given time). It should be interesting to see what Skype has up its sleeve in the New Year. CrunchBase Information Skype Information provided by CrunchBase
 
What The "Great Delicious Exodus" Looked Like For Pin-Sized Competitor Pinboard Top
When word got out two weeks ago that Yahoo is not 100% committed to Delicious, people who still use the bookmarking service started to panic and look for alternatives. One competing bookmarking site that some people turned to is Pinboard , a barebones bookmarking site which looks a lot like Delicious did in its early years: lean, no-frills, and very useful. The company saw an influx of traffic and activity. The chart above shows requests per minute to its servers in the three days following the Delicious news compared to the week before. A couple hour ago, Pinboard Tweeted out a link to the chart: @PinboardIN Pinboard This is what the Great Delicious Exodus looked like to our servers: http://bit.ly/frLwmA (contrasted with normal traffic a week earlier) December 29, 2010 7:42 pm via TweetDeck Retweet Reply The service wasn’t handling a huge number of requests to begin with—a few hundred per minute at peak—but that number increased about tenfold to over 2,500 requests per minute. Pinboard allows you to import your bookmarks out of Delicious. Mike suggested switching from Delicious more than a year ago. But from what I can tell it only has about 9,000 users. You are asked to pay a one-time fee to sign up, which helps to prevent spammers from joining. The current fee is $9.07 and it is based on the number of users. So not a whole lot of Delicious users switched to Pinboard, but it was enough to move the needle for the small bookmarking site. Update : Pinboard says it has closer to 16,000 users. The longer Delicious remains in purgatory , the more users are going to look for alternatives like Pinboard. The site even provides an honest list of pros and cons for those considering the switch. CrunchBase Information Pinboard delicious Information provided by CrunchBase
 

CREATE MORE ALERTS:

Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted

Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope

Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more

News - Only the news you want, delivered!

Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more

Weather - Get today's weather conditions




You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)