The latest from TechCrunch
- Wolfram Research Acquires Modeling And Simulation Software Developer MathCore
- Something Is Technically Wrong With Twitter
- White-Label App Marketplace Platform Appia Raises $10M At $100M Valuation
- Flickr Dips Its Toes Into Social With Twitter And Facebook 'Share This' Features
- This Is What Skype 5 For Mac Should Look Like
- With +1, Google Search Goes Truly Social — As Do Google Ads
| Wolfram Research Acquires Modeling And Simulation Software Developer MathCore | Top |
| Wolfram Research , the parent company behind computational search engine Wolfram Alpha, is acquiring MathCore Engineering AB, the developer of the MathModelica modeling and simulation software system. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. MathModelica is a software system for multi-engineering modeling and simulation based on Modelica and Mathematica. MathModelica allows users to develop advanced multi-engineering models in a simple drag and drop interface and includes a large number of built-in base models for engineering domains, including electrical, mechanical, and thermal, as well as for areas like biochemical modeling. The resulting models can be directly simulated and visualized. MathCore’s software is used by companies such as Rolls-Royce, Siemens and Scania. One of the pluses of MathModelica is that it is fully integrated with Wolfram’s computational software program Mathmatica. MathModelica models can currently be directly imported into Mathematica. And the two software products are complimentary. For example, measurement data can be imported to Mathematica and used to validate models, identify parameter values, and so on. Wolfram plans to bring together Mathematica and MathCore's technology—as well as Wolfram|Alpha and CDF—to create a system that “will launch a whole new era in design, modeling and systems engineering.” For more details on the acquisition and technology, checkout Stephen Wolfram’s in-depth blog post on the subject. CrunchBase Information Wolfram Research Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Something Is Technically Wrong With Twitter | Top |
| Hey Erick, I have a question for Jack Dorsey . What’s up with Twitter ? As I’m sure you’ve noticed, Twitter is down (for some users) , so in true TechCrunch tradition we need to celebrate the downtime with a post. Sorry, did we say downtime? Twitter calls that an elevated error rate . (It indeed appears to be only a subset of users having issues). Fear not: our post about alternative things you can do when Twitter goes down is still up . As you can see above, former TechCruncher Laura Boychenko remembered it well. Oh, and don’t forget to retweet this … never mind. CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| White-Label App Marketplace Platform Appia Raises $10M At $100M Valuation | Top |
| White-label mobile app platform Appia (formerly PocketGear ), is announcing that it has secured $10 million in new funding from Venrock . According to sources familiar with the matter, the startup was valued at $100 million in the round. This latest investment brings Appia’s total funding to $30 million . Dev Khare , Vice President at Venrock, has joined the company's board of directors. Until February, PocketGear wss an independent marketplace that billed itself as the "World's Largest Mobile App Store which sold apps for Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian, and Java phones. The company rebranded and shifted focus as Appia, powering a white-label content and commerce platform for everyone and anyone who needs an app store. The company now powers mobile app storefronts for more than 40 partners, including four of the world’s top five handset manufacturers (Samsung, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon Wireless). Appia also recently announced partnerships with Opera Software , to power the Opera Mobile Store for more than 100 million users, as well as with Telcel, Mexico's largest operator, to power the Ideas Appstore for Telcel's 64 million subscribers. The bonus of using Appia's white-label offering is that it enables its partners to deliver apps to more than 3,200 different mobile device makes and models. Via its partnerships, Appia currently powers more than 500,000 downloads a day from a catalog of 140,000 apps with projections to double by mid-2011. Jud Bowman, founder and CEO, Appia tells us that the company is seeing success because it is just not feasible for companies to create an iTunes-like platform in-house. It could take years and a massive amount of resources, and because of this, carriers, and other technology companies are looking for easier ways to create open app marketplaces. Appia says that it will use the new funding towards international expansion and new product development. Bowman may be on to something—there seems to be a rush of companies (i.e. Amazon ) who are looking to take part in the explosion of mobile apps. But getting traffic to many of these stores is going to be a challenge as the mobile app marketplace world becomes more fragmented. CrunchBase Information Appia Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Flickr Dips Its Toes Into Social With Twitter And Facebook 'Share This' Features | Top |
| Photo-sharing site Flickr , which has limitless potential in terms of the sheer number of photos stored on the service (over 5 billion at last count) , has made it easier for users to share their photos today with new Twitter and Facebook “Share This” features. A slight share interface re-vamp comes along with the new features. While previously you could only share photostreams, groups, and sets from Flickr by sending an email, manually grabbing the link/code or on Blogger, users now have the option to post individual photos and everything else on Facebook and Twitter as well as on Tumblr via “Share This” drop down menu in the upper left of each photo. The new features interestingly enough operate on different privacy levels: Logged-in users will be able to share private photos with their friends on Facebook, but only public content will be available for sharing via Twitter and Tumblr or for logged out users on Facebook. Flickr, probably feeling the heat from mobile social photo services like Instagram and even Color, plans on bringing these features to their mobile apps and sites as soon as possible. Welcome to the party Flickr. CrunchBase Information Flickr Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| This Is What Skype 5 For Mac Should Look Like | Top |
| Skype users with any sense of aesthetic justice are pretty much in unanimous agreement that the user interface for Skype 5 for Mac is a disaster. Between the useless coverflow way of scrolling through Contacts, the using of “recently talked to” instead of “online” as a hierarchy for listing Contacts and the irrational hogging of onscreen real estate in the most recent update, I’ve now began to shudder every time I see the message “There is a new version of Skype available.” I am not alone in thinking that the ability to video chat with multiple people isn’t worth the rest of Skype 5 for Mac’s UI hassles. Software Engineer Lucas Matis just wrote a nearly 2,000 word missive on how the new Skype is too confusing for the casual user, and not complex enough for someone more advanced (And why can you no longer send links while in video chat mode?). “At the company I work, we use Skype to communicate. A lot of the people here use Windows computers. More than once, a Windows user walked by my Mac, saw my version of Skype, and said something to the effect of «wow, this looks so much better than the horrible mess we have on Windows!» It seems Skype has noticed that there is a discrepancy in quality between the two versions, and has decided to make the two versions more similar to each other. Unfortunately, instead of making the Windows version of Skype better, they've decided to fix the discrepancy by making the Mac version of Skype more like the Windows version.” Skype itself seems at the least unaware of the problem, recently and flippantly holding a design contest for a custom chat style , which lead to a barrage of comments from angry users like this one: “Please Skype team, don’t move on to add other new stuff when everyone, and by everyone I mean everyone, hates your 5.X version on the Mac. What will matter to have a nice chat window, if no one likes the whole application? As many other people I’m staying with 2.8, and I don’t care about chat windows, or anything else you think will add benefits to the 5.x version, just get rid of that horrible interface!!!” Instead of being content to sit and complain in the comments, designer Matthias Kampitsch decided to take the “customize Skype for Mac” thing a bit further and actually redesign the whole thing (above/below). The result? A cleaner, more intuitive way to use Skype, complete with a global menu bar short cut and an online/offline contacts hierarchy. Consider this a warning, Skype. In the meantime you can get Skype v2.8 back here. CrunchBase Information Skype Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| With +1, Google Search Goes Truly Social — As Do Google Ads | Top |
| Back in early December of last year, we first reported that Google was toying around with the name “+1″ for an upcoming social product. At the time, we were told it was sort of like Google’s version of the “like” or “retweet” button. Today it officially launches as a way to share Google Search results that you like with your friends and the broader web in general. Oh, and also a way to inject social into Google Ads. To be clear, the version of +1 which is beginning to roll out today is not the toolbar version that we first got a glimpse of in December, that’s apparently a different version that was being tested. This version of +1 actually launching is a small button that will reside next to each and every Google Search result. If you like the result, you click the +1 button and it gets shared with your social circle — and the public (more on that in a bit). The button also works on the ads that appear in Google Search. If you like those and think they can be useful to friends, you can also hit the button there to highlight them. That may sound like something no one would ever do, but the implementation is actually pretty smart. You see, since the pages that are linked to in Google ads also appear in Google’s regular index, if a page has ever been +1′d as a regular result, it will also show up as +1′d in the ad. But let’s take a step back for a second. Google +1 is an extension of what Google has been doing for a while with Social Search, Google’s Matt Cutts tells us. In their most recent update to that feature, results were surfaced and highlighted when someone in your social circle shared something on a social network like Twitter or Buzz. “ People really like this aspect of social search ,” Cutts says. At the same time, the current social mechanisms require some work to be useful — you have to explicitly share a link somewhere. You might not want to do that with every link you like. And that’s where the +1 button comes in, it’s a simple way to indicate you like a page and think it might be useful to others. Again, basically a “like” button. Cutts wants to be very clear that this +1 data is public. While a big aspect of +1 is sharing results with your social graph (which is still sort of confusing given that Google isn’t an actual social network, so it’s Gmail chat contacts, Reader and Buzz friends, etc) , it is also about using that data in aggregate to highlight better results for everyone. For example, on a result that has been +1′d, you’ll see if any of your friends have +1′d it (in a similar way to the current Social Search look with people’s tiny profile icons under the result itself). But you’ll also see that X number of other people that aren’t in your social circle +1′d it as well. This also ties directly into Google’s push to make all Google Profiles public . If you’ve upgraded to the new Google Profile, you will have a new +1 tab that will keep track of all the results you’ve clicked the button for. From here you can easily remove any result as well if you no longer want to publicly indicate that you like it. And when you’re adding +1 to search and your profile (it will be opt-in at first), you’ll notice that there’s a check box to opt-out of using your +1 information to “personalize content and ads across the web.” The last bit is key there. Ads. Again, you’ll be able to +1 any Google ad you see in results just as if it were a regular result. This is similar to the concept Digg has been using with Digg Ads (ads that you can digg), and sort of like the way you can retweet any Twitter Promoted tweet. Of course, it’s most like the way that you can “like” any ad on Facebook as well. At the end of the day, that’s what this really all comes down to. Whether they’ll admit it or not, Google is at war with Facebook for control of the web. Facebook is coming at it from a social perspective, Google from a data perspective. But the two sides have been inching closer to one another. Facebook isn’t fully doing search — yet . But their social ad play is also a huge threat to Google. Probably even a bigger threat, since that’s the way Google makes the vast majority of their money. And +1 is a big attempt to keep pace with Facebook in that regard. The key that Google isn’t really touting yet is that +1 data can be used to make ads social not just on Google Search result pages, but also across the whole web. If you have a site that runs AdSense ads, it may now feature +1 data in addition to the ad. And these newly social ads require no changes from advertisers. The bidding model doesn’t change at all and as a bonus +1 data will now be included in reports, Google’s Christian Oestlien says. Guess who else would like to do the same thing with ads across the web given the social data that they have? Yep — Facebook. At the same time, Google has had many failures in the social space. And they realized that with +1, they couldn’t afford to have some big hyped-up launch once again. So they’re purposely taking it slow. There will be no +1 buttons for publishers at launch that will be blanketed across the web (but you better believe they’re coming). There will be no toolbar that spreads across other Google properties (that may be coming). There will be no mobile app or aspect (that is likely coming as well ). The feature itself will roll out slowly and will at first be an opt-in one found in Google’s search experiments area . But make no mistake, this is a massive Google project. And eventually it will hit all users — and not just those logged into their Google accounts. Down the line, Google can envision this +1 data influencing search results across the board, Cutts says. That’s what we call “downplaying” — assuming people use it, the social data is very likely to be the key ingredient to the future of Google Search. For now, you can enable +1 here . CrunchBase Information Google Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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