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| SeeWhy Raises $4.5 Million, Improves Website Conversion By Closely Tracking Abandoners Posted: 05 May 2009 08:49 AM PDT
Imagine a potential restaurant visitor calling a place he’s never been before, asking all sorts of questions about the establishment and ultimately deciding to make a reservation elsewhere. If you’re the restaurant owner, you should be wondering what went wrong where and when, and what you can do about it. Now assume the number of people calling the restaurant and ultimately not booking grows to 10 out of 30 people who would have been ready to make a reservation if everything added up for them. Pretty important for a business to know what’s up, right? Same thing happens with people who want to sign up for a certain web service or become a customer of an e-commerce website. Not everyone completes the process for signing up or buying something online, and the reasons can be very diverse. Website abandonment measurement and management should be high up on the priority list for any web service provider, particularly those who use the Internet to sell products, whether directly or indirectly. Evaluating the entire process that is supposed to guide a visitor towards becoming a customer should be done on a continuous basis, and it’s very important to know why people start the cycle but never finish it. Let’s go back to the restaurant. Suppose a person who wasn’t convinced by the person answering the phone at the place hung up, turned on the radio or TV and stumbled upon an advertisement for the restaurant, making him change his mind again. I know this is an extremely unlikely scenario, but it gets more feasible when you apply this to the Web. The above example, which you could categorize under the denominator ‘re-converting’, is pretty similar to what SeeWhy is trying to accomplish for e-commerce vendors and web application providers: try and get the abandoners (i.e. people who leave online registration or purchasing system prior to finishing the process) to come back and complete the cycle. Not 24 hours or more later, but practically in real-time. SeeWhy has launched the free Abandonment Tracker (available as a software-as-a-service), which makes it easy to convert website visitors who had previously abandoned their shopping carts, online forms, applications and registrations. The tracker captures the unique IDs of website abandoners and then emails those IDs to the website operator for use in follow-up campaigns targeted to the abandoners. When a visitor lands on a web page again, an event is sent to SeeWhy’s data center. If the visitor doesn’t convert, SeeWhy records the abandonment along with the details, including email address, shopping cart items and amount, and stage in the conversion process at which the visitor abandoned. The whole point of the system is to recapture abandoned revenue. Currently SeeWhy’s suite of real-time web analytic applications is being used by both large and small ecommerce companies, including Amazon.com, eBay, Land's End, Citibank and MasterCard. The company just raised $4.5 million in funding from Scottish Equity Partners, Logispring, and Pentech Ventures. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Gist Scores $6.75 Million For Gmail, Twitter and Microsoft Outlook Integration Service Posted: 05 May 2009 07:55 AM PDT
Seattle-based Gist has secured $6.75 million in Series A funding led by the Foundry Group with participation by its founding investor Vulcan Capital. The investment will be used for product development efforts and to expand operations. Currently in closed beta, Gist integrates with Microsoft Outlook and Gmail to aggregate, organize and prioritize emails, links, attachments, and related information (news, blogs, etc.) in a user’s email inbox. Gist also integrates with LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter bringing feeds and information together across social networks. Users can access Gist on the web, inside applications (i.e. Outlook), or on their mobile device. Gist has an iPhone app that is also available. Launched in 2008, the company was founded by T.A. McCann, an entrepreneur and former senior employee in Microsoft’s Exchange Server Group. It was started and initially funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Vulcan Capital. After extensive prototyping and research, McCann and Vulcan launched the company in mid-2008 with its headquarters in Seattle, WA. Here’s a screenshot of Gist’s interface:  Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Niche Mag Publisher Future Launches Dozens Of News Aggregator Sites Under DailyRadar Posted: 05 May 2009 05:50 AM PDT
The future of media is algorithmic aggregation, at least that is the approach Future US is taking. The U.S. subsidiary of Future PLC, and publisher of such niche magazines as Nintendo Power, Guitar World, and Maximum PC, is adopting a different approach online than simply putting its print articles on the Web. Instead, it has launched dozens of news aggregation and discovery sites called “Blips” that are a combination of Techmeme and Digg. The Blips collect topical stories from across the Web and present the headlines in discussion clusters like you’d see on Techmeme, but stories can also then be voted up the page like on Digg. There are about 40 different Blips on various topics, including TechBlips, EarthBlips, and WrestlingBlips. All of them are accessible from Future’s online portal, DailyRadar (which also houses the magazine content under games, music, tech, entertainment, and sports tags). Future has been launching Blips quietly since last summer, and they now account for 9.3 million of DailyRadar’s 27 million monthly unique visitors (which is up from about 12 million uniques a year ago before the Blips sites were added). The Blip sites are based on Future’s $3 million acquisition of BallHype last year. Now Future is rolling out about half a dozen new Blips every month. The underlying technology evaluates 26,000 different news sources, blogs, video sites, and photo sites to create topical Blips. Once a source is white-listed by an editor or added by a reader, it then becomes part of the mix. Stories are clustered together, with the placement of headlines determined by a combination of links, votes, and age (newer stories rank higher). To show off the technology, DailyRadar has an interactive Trendmap showing which tags and keywords are peaking on the site. You can create Trendmaps for different broad categories and grab it as a widget, which I’ve done below:
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| ‘Particle’ Roars Out Of Stealth With Three New Products, And Justin Timberlake’s Blessing Posted: 05 May 2009 01:26 AM PDT
It isn’t often that we hear about a startup looking to build things that are “massively small”. But today a new startup called Particle is coming out of stealth with that mantra, along with a handful of bite-sized new products that seem to fit the bill nicely. The company is also bringing with it an interesting source of funding, with musician Justin Timberlake as its lead investor (Timberlake isn’t new to Silicon Valley - his past investments include Tapulous). The first service to launch today is called Robo.to, which is meant to serve as a ‘digital calling card’. In some senses the service is like a mix between Google Profiles and Ping.fm, offering a single hub for all of your online presences and social activity, from which you can broadcast your status updates to multiple services. Visitors to your profile can quickly see how many Twitter followers you have, your latest Flickr photos, your current location (assuming you’ve plotted it), and links to your other online presences. The site also prominently features a spot for a ‘video avatar’ - a brief video clip that’s meant to take the place of traditional emoticons or static photos, which you can broadcast to a number of popular online services. It’s a neat concept, reminiscent of the moving photographs from Harry Potter (for an example see the video below, or Timberlake’s profile here). And while it may not catch on with everyone, I suspect it could prove popular with younger crowds. The site is also very mobile friendly (note the narrow width), and plays nice with the iPhone out the gate. The second service is Crush3r, an Evite competitor that allows users to send out invitations to their friends. While not particularly novel, the service is well designed with very little clutter. Each invitation is also highly customizable, with a checklist of options for each module that you’d like to be included with the invitation (options include videos, a list of other guests, and items that the invitee should bring). Like I said, it’s nothing revolutionary, but it seems like a great alternative to some of the bloated sites like Evite that many of us have been trying to move away from for years. Finally, there’s p0p, which is a sort of scrapbook for listing your favorite sites, books, and media content into lists, which can then be shared with friends. After building these lists, users can then share them as blog embeds or via social networks. And as your friends join, it can be used as a recommendation engine. At this point it isn’t exactly clear what Particle’s vision is with its products - they obviously seem to be pretty disjointed, though they’ve all been well designed and are quite polished. CEO Rey Flemings says that there is a grand plan; we’ll just have to wait a few more months to see it. And even if the grand scheme doesn’t come to fruition, at least they’re hedging their bets across three fairly discrete spaces.
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| Twitter Mania: Google Got Shut Down. Apple Rumors Heat Up. Posted: 05 May 2009 01:21 AM PDT
Google tried to buy it but was rebuffed by Twitter CEO Evan Williams, says a source with knowledge of the talks. Today, though, rumors popped up that Apple may be looking to buy Twitter. “Apple is in late stage negotiations to buy Twitter and is hoping to announce it at WWDC in June,” said a normally reliable source this evening, adding that the purchase price would be $700 million in cash. The trouble is we’ve checked with other sources who claim to know nothing about any Apple negotiations. If these discussions are happening, Twitter is keeping them very quiet indeed. We would have passed on reporting this rumor at all, but other press is now picking it up. Twitter is strongly signaling that it doesn’t want to sell at any price right now. The founders took significant money off the table in the last round valuing Twitter at $250 million, we’ve heard, and are aligned with investors to see Twitter through to the end. And frankly that’s probably the best thing for the Internet. I wrote in an earlier post that I’d like to see Twitter spread its wings a little longer and see what it can become. It’ll be hard to do that as a subsidiary of Google, Apple, or anyone else for that matter. If Twitter wants to stay independent that’s just fine with me. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Steve Ballmer Visits Silicon Valley, Yahoo Search Deal Rumors Buzz Posted: 05 May 2009 12:44 AM PDT
Much of this may have to do with the fact that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is in Silicon Valley, and has been at least since the weekend. He’s speaking at an event Wednesday night, which explains the trip. But instead of just jetting in and out, he’s come days early. Why? Who knows, but that’s plenty of information to start the rumor mill going. Our direct sources are telling us that discussions are progressing, as they have been for some time, but that major deal terms still need to be worked out. One source said not to expect a deal in the next few weeks. Ever since Google was forced to bail on their own Yahoo search deal, some sort of alliance with Microsoft was inevitable. Well, inevitable just as soon as Yahoo got their CEO situation under control. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| hi5 Adds Chat, With A Social Twist Posted: 05 May 2009 12:15 AM PDT
Social network hi5 is launching an instant messaging service, hi5 IM, adding real-time interaction for users. hi5 IM, which is similar to Facebook Chat, Facebook’s instant messaging feature, shows users which friends within their network are online and runs directly in any hi5 user's browser. In addition to one-on-one chat, users can change their status, write updates, post profile comments, and share photos through hi5 IM. It appears that the social network is looking to amp its “entertainment features” to gain more users and is also focusing on engaging users though casual gaming and micro-payments. Hi5 also recently partnered with Paymo to power mobile payments for virtual goods. The social network is hoping that real-time chat will compliment casual games, and interaction with other content on the social network. hi5 IM also enables users to share and express their emotions through animated hi5 "star" emoticons. The star, derived from the hi5 logo, represents a variety of virtual gestures and emotions, such as sad, happy, laughing, crying, playing dead, angry and shy. Last month, the self-described "world's leading social entertainment web site," got a new CEO, Bill Gossman, formerly the CEO of the online advertising service Audience Science. And at the end of March, the social network hi5 cut a large percentage of its staff following the failure of a new round of funding to materialize. With nearly 60 million active users, hi5 has a good sized audience, but it's long been far behind the big boys in the social networking space, MySpace and Facebook. Facebook is the most popular social network worldwide with 294.7 million unique visitors, with MySpace coming in second with 125.7 million unique visitors. hi5 gets about 63 million monthly unique visits worldwide but only 3.7 million of those are from the U.S., according to ComScore's March stats. And a good chunk of ts audience is in countries where it is hard to attract advertisers, Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| MarketRiders Promises Steady Returns Through The Magic of Exchange-Traded Funds Posted: 04 May 2009 11:28 PM PDT
If you think you can beat the stock market, don’t bother reading this post. This post is about a startup that wants to make investing boring and predictable, which is something most of the investing public could use right now. MarketRiders has actually been in beta for about a year, and now it is ready to be tested by a broader group of investors. The idea is simple: If you get your asset allocation right and eliminate management fees, you can boost your returns and outperform nearly every actively traded fund over the long haul. Mitch Tuchman, the founder of MarketRiders and a former hedge fund manager, studied the investment strategies of big university endowments like Yale’s. He learned that 80 to 90 percent of returns within any given year come from being in the right asset class (stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, emerging markets), not from stock picking or market timing. The trick to steady returns is to try to mimic the market, not beat it, through exposure to broad asset classes. “Wall Street is the biggest fleecing machine in the world,” says Tuchman. “It is selling investors on the idea that if you give this manager money he will give you a better return than the market.”
A better strategy, he thinks, is simply to buy a variety of exchange-traded funds which index different markets and then periodically re-balance your portfolio. Rebalancing means trimming back the (inflated) winners and buying the (cheap) losers, which requires discipline and emotional detachment. MarketRiders helps you come up with an asset allocation strategy appropriate to your age and investment goals, suggests ETFs to buy, and then sends you rebalancing alerts whenever necessary. ETFs have very low fees, which help overall returns. You still need to take the suggestions and place orders with your broker—a detail which introduces some friction into the process. But once you have your account set up, it tracks everything automatically. Still, for the $9.95/month MarketRiders is asking, it could at least hook up with your brokerage account and do the re-balancing automatically. Nevertheless, Tuchman is on a mission: “I am trying to save people from the biggest con game in the country right now.” If you feel comfortable taking an active role in managing your own money and can attend to it on a regular basis, you can give MarketRiders a free try for a month. You can click on the image below to see a screenshot showing a typical portfolio, along with the alert levels (red means sell, green means buy).
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| New Amazon Kindle Details Emerge Posted: 04 May 2009 09:18 PM PDT  The mystery behind what Amazon will announce on Wednesday has taken another twist. The WSJ is reporting that Amazon will, indeed, announce a University textbook specific model with a larger screen at the press conference later this week. So where did this come from and what else can we expect? One Lev Gonick from Case Western Reserve University has confirmed that Amazon will be providing the university with larger screen Kindles next school year. And Arthur Sulzberger Jr., New York Times Co. Chairman is said to be sharing the stage with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at the event on Wednesday which quasi-confirms the rumors of a newspaper specific Kindle.
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| CrossLoop’s Screen-Sharing App Comes To The Mac Posted: 04 May 2009 08:50 PM PDT
After nearly five million downloads of its Windows PC client, CrossLoop brings its screen-sharing app and growing pro-am computer support community to the Mac (download here, for Intel Macs running OS X 10.4 or higher). CrossLoop is a peer-to-peer screen sharing app that lets a remote IT specialist or a friend take over your computer to fix a problem or give you a tutorial. Since its launch in November, 2006, more than 100 million minutes worth of sessions have been shared through the service, with shared minutes growing at a 210 percent annual rate. It took CrossLoop 132 days to reach its first one million minutes of shared screen time. Now, its members are sharing one million minutes every four days. The vast majority of the help sessions on CrossLoop are done for free, but 14,414 semi-professional “helpers” charge for their services, collecting about $55 to $60 per session. For instance, for $50 you can get help switching from a PC to a Mac. CrossLoop takes a 15 percent cut of all the paid sessions for hosting a directory of helpers, providing the software, keeping track of session lengths, and handling the payments. Peer-to-peer product support will grow in popularity over time (see Fixya). If consumers can find someone on CrossLoop who can fix their computer faster and cheaper than someone at the local computer repair shop, it is a no-brainer. Of course, if the computer is completely dead or you can’t get on the Internet, CrossLoop won’t do you any good. But there are plenty of other times when you just need a little guidance from your family’s designated tech support expert, or are even willing to pay someone who actually knows what they are doing. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Google Reader Still Trying To Figure Out This Whole Social Thing. Still Failing. Posted: 04 May 2009 06:45 PM PDT
This idea isn’t really anything new, in fact, FriendFeed (aka the primary source of Facebook’s innovations these days), has been doing something similar for a couple of years now. The reason for doing this is obvious: If you don’t have a lot of friends on a service, the friend of a friend element pipes more content into your stream to make things more active, and thus, more appealing to use. But FriendFeed is doing this much better than Google Reader is, so far. Trying the new functionality out, it seems a bit weird that I would be asked if I want to share my updates with a certain person who I probably don’t know. Instead, wouldn’t it be better to have the option to see their updates? Of course, Google Reader doesn’t work that way. Following its snafus when it first ventured into social sharing, the company made it awfully hard to share stuff. So whereas you can subscribe to anyone on FriendFeed (at least anyone that has an open feed, just like on Twitter), to see items on Google Reader, they have to share stuff with you. The problem with this is that most people don’t care to take the time to explicitly set their sharing settings to include all those people that may want to be included. And there’s another problem with Google Reader’s social aspirations. The product from a sharing standpoint is extremely clunky. Sharing is tucked away in its own drop down menu, something which I routinely find is just about my last item to visit (and is normally relegated under the “Mark all as read” umbrella). The problem here is that all of my individual friends’ names are listed below the “Friends’ shared items” banner, so I keep it minimized to avoid clutter. I also keep it minimized because rarely do my friends ever comment on items. And if they do happen to, it’s even rarer that another person will comment as well, giving you — get this — a conversation. That’s something that FriendFeed does extremely well. Google Reader? Not so much.
It was smart of Google to tie the Google Reader profile into the newly emphasized Google Profiles — this is something we’re going to see more of across all its properties, no doubt. But what Google Reader really needs is some way to spur social usage. It needs either a main page where the most shared/most talked about items are listed, that gives you a rundown of who shared what. It sort of has a recommended area, with its “cool” feed, which shares popular items across the Google Reader ecosystem, but that’s far from social. Or maybe it should add a list comments you leave on shared items to your main Google Profile. This would be a micro-blog of sorts with your take on stories. Of course, that would require that you allow anyone to see your shared items, which is something, again, you cannot do within Google Reader. But oddly, you can see others’ shared items if you know their public Shared Item page URL (which is a bunch of ugly numbers and letters and should be turned into their Google Profile name as well, if Google is going to go in that direction). It’s really quite a confusing mess. As I noted, a ton of people use Google Reader as a primary way to go through items on the web. It seems natural that this would be a powerful social tool as well, but Google has effectively made it one of the most closed social networks around. It’s closed and its clunky. That just reeks of inactivity. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| DealBase Finds $1 Million For Hotel Deal Database Posted: 04 May 2009 06:05 PM PDT
DealBase.com, an online database devoted to aggregating hotel deals and packages, has secured $1 million in Series A funding from angel investors including Russ Siegelman, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Bob Zipp, managing director of Amicus Capital; and Josh Hannah, general partner at Matrix Partners and former CEO of eHow.com. Launched in November 2008, DealBase crawls the web to create a database of hotel deals, special offers and packages, which currently number more than 22,000 deals, from over 3,500 sources, adding up to $4,660,093 in total savings on the site. The online travel industry is a competitive market chock full of sites that find consumer deals for travel, which makes the popularity contest incredibly tough. Expedia, Kayak, Travelzoo and others all offer packages and deals through their platforms and have a dedicated user base. What makes DealBase’s site slightly more unique is its “Deal Analyzer” functionality that compares deal prices to regular prices, and then rates the deal for travelers so they can determine if they’re getting a good deal or not. Sam Shank, founder of DealBase, says that 15 percent of deals on the site have negative savings. But Microsoft-owned Farecast, a travel site focused in finding deals for hotels and air travel, also has a feature that measures how well-priced the hotel is compared to its original pricing and other hotels. The main difference is that Farecast doesn’t limit its search to just deals and packages while DealBase only lists deals and special promotions for hotels. Shank also maintains that since DealBase lets any hotels post advertisements for free, with no advertising deals, the process is transparent and hotels have more of an incentive in the current economy to post a deal for free. Currently, DealBase features over 500 deals for New York City Hotels while Travelzoo lists only 7 deals. Expedia also features nearly 500 deals for hotels in New York. If DealBase’s database has the same reach and information of more established sites like Expedia, that could be a good sign. Shank’s previous startup, TravelPost, was one of the larger hotel review sites in the US and was acquired by SideStep, a comprehensive travel deal search engine. SideStep was then acquired by competitor Kayak in December 2007 for $180 million.  Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| SMSGupShup (India’s “Twitter”) Grows To 20 million Users, $150,000/month Revenue Posted: 04 May 2009 05:30 PM PDT
The service can only be accessed via SMS, which works just fine for India’s 400 million mobile phone users (there are just 40 million broadband Internet users, Sheth says). Users sign up and use the service all via text messages. They never need to visit the website at all. The service’s main variable costs are fees for text messages, and Sheth says that they’ve had to implement caps to keep costs under control. But as the service grows, says Sheth, they are able to negotiate much better pricing. Already SMSGupShup accounts for 400 million monthly text messages, around “5%-6%” of the total Indian market. Three months ago the service added advertising to messages. Three months in and they’re making $150,000/month in revenue. Not bad for a SMS-based service. The full video interview is below. Thanks to Robert Scoble who participated briefly in the interview. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| About Schmidt: Does The FTC Really Think Apple And Google Are Too Buddy Buddy? Posted: 04 May 2009 04:50 PM PDT
Specifically, Eric Schmidt and Arthur Levinson sit on the boards of both companies. And section 8 of the The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 prohibits two companies from sharing the same board member(s), if it is going to decrease competition between the two. But, as the NYT notes, this is rarely enforced. And even if it were, it would be difficult to penalize, because the person would likely just resign from one of the boards. But it’s interesting nonetheless that the government is looking into this for a couple reasons — both involving Schmidt, who is of course, also the CEO of Google. First, new antitrust chief Christine A. Varney, has a history of linking Google to the word “antitrust.” Last June, before she held the post, she said that Microsoft represented an antitrust threat for the last century, but that Google was the one to watch now. When she was named as the nominee, plenty pointed this out, saying that it was good that President Obama would choose someone who would take such a stance even with Obama’s close ties to Schmidt, who helped in significant ways to get him elected. More recently, Schmidt was appointed to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. The second reason that this is interesting is again because of Schmidt. He has been on Apple’s board for a number of years, and this has presented an interesting situation recently for the two companies. When discussing the iPhone in Apple’s board meetings, Schmidt has to excuse himself, since one of Google’s key products, Android, competes with the iPhone. This hasn’t been too much of an issue in the past since just as they compete, sometimes the two companies also help one another in terms of things like apps for the iPhone. But a report a few months ago indicated that Google may have decided not to include multi-touch support in Android at the behest of Apple. If the FTC actually decides to seriously pursue this, it could well force Schmidt to step down from his position on Apple’s board. Sure, the two sides could fight it, but it would be much easier for everyone if he just did that. But is that what’s really going on here? Going back to the Microsoft connection; it’s hard not to jump at the opportunity to speculate that it plays a roll in this FTC inquiry. The software giant is known to have a large and powerful Washington lobby — one that has done shady things in the past. But would it really use some of its clout to demand this sort of inquiry which rarely results in any kind of action? It seems a bit unlikely, but perhaps it’s possible if it really just wants to mess with Google and Apple. But again, that’s just pure speculation. Instead, this may just be a shot across the bow of Google by the antitrust team, letting them know that despite the close ties the administration has to Schmidt, it is watching. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Survey Says: PR People Love Our No-Embargo Policy Posted: 04 May 2009 04:30 PM PDT
The PR industry never ceases to amaze me. Despite the fact that we stopped honoring most embargoes back in December, 2008 and sent out a very public memo about it, we still get flooded with unsolicited emails and press releases requesting that we publish the information contained in them only after a certain date. When we decided to stop playing the whole embargo game, we fully expected a backlash from the PR industry. And, to be honest, we do sometimes have to hustle a little more to get a story or get bypassed entirely for massive launches that everyone else is covering anyway. But according to a survey of 246 tech PR pros conducted by PRSourceCode, TechCrunch is still the No 1 tech blog they target when trying to get coverage for their clients. Great. This is a dubious honor to say the least. But I can only conclude from this survey that PR people love our no-embargo policy. So we’ll just have to keep enforcing it (with a few exceptions). In fact, and I do feel bad about this, I am enforcing it right now. I wasn’t supposed to tell you about this top-secret survey until May 20. A very nice PR person, who shall remain nameless, asked me to keep it “mum.” But I can’t do that because our policy is to share interesting news with our readers as soon as possible. Which tech blogs are targeted the most by the PR industry despite some of our best efforts not to be targeted? Here is the list (for some reason they split it up between “tech blogs” and blogs of more traditional mainstream media): Top 10 Tech Blogs 1. TechCrunch Top 10 Tech Pub Blogs 1. The WSJ’s Business Technology Blogs The survey also produced a list of the most influential tech bloggers, according to PR professionals. 1. Michael Arrington (TechCrunch) I am kind of embarrassed to be on this list (but not as embarrassed as Mike should be—I mean, what a tool). I hope that by publishing it now before the “embargo” I will get kicked off it before it is officially released. Seriously, Engadget’s Joshua Topolsky deserves to be on it way more than me. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| OffiSync Brings Microsoft Office And Google Docs Together At Last Posted: 04 May 2009 04:20 PM PDT
Google Docs has been around since 2006, offering a powerful and free alternative to Microsoft’s dominant productivity suite. But for many people, it remains something of a novelty - it’s there, but they don’t use it regularly. This is in part because of the inherent security issues with Cloud-based services, which make businesses hesitant to upload their confidential files. But the biggest reason? Google Docs and Microsoft Office simply don’t play nice. OffiSync, a new plugin for Microsoft Office, is looking to change that. The application, which supports Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents, is launching in a private beta (you can request an invite from its homepage), with support for Office 2003 and 2007 on Windows. Mac users are out of luck for the time being. There are already a few options for syncing files from Microsoft Office with Google Docs, but these typically involving syncing your ‘My Documents’ folder rather than the individual files, and aren’t as deeply tied into Office. Alongside basic file syncing, OffiSync also integrates a number of features from Google Docs to actually improve Office. One of these is integrated Google search, which allows you to search through all of your Google Docs files directly from your Office toolbar. The service also has support for Google Docs collaboration, though it isn’t as complete as I’d like. Using OffiSync, multiple people can edit the same file without having to worry about overwriting each other’s changes. But if you want to see real-time edits (which is one of the more powerful features of Google Docs), you’ll have to use the browser-based interface. Founder Oudi Antebi says that real time edits are in the works, and will be included in an update over the summer. Even Google, while not directly involved with building OffiSync, is optimistic about the service. Google Docs product manager Jonathan Rochelle says that his team thinks the app is “great”, and that it will appeal to a large audience, though he notes that the app is “still pretty early”. But even if it works, it might not be so easy to make money - a company called DocSyncer with a similar premise entered the Deadpool last summer. OffiSync will be free for individuals, with plans to release an enterprise version in the next 6-9 months, which will help large businesses work in a mixed environment. Of course, OffiSync is going to be racing against the clock to some extent, as Microsoft has made its intention to tie Office to its own cloud services clear. Still, Antebi is optimistic about OffiSync’s chances, explaining that Microsoft’s offerings will likely only work for the newest versions of Office, while OffiSync will work with older editions that the vast majority of computer users already have. If you primarily work with PowerPoint slides, also be sure to check out SlideShare’s Office plugin.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Showing Its Twitter Envy, Facebook Gets Serious About SMS Posted: 04 May 2009 03:05 PM PDT
It appears that over the past few weeks, Facebook has widely activated a feature that allows you to text Facebook to update your status, message your friends, or send a poke on the go. You can opt to receive texts with status updates, messages, pokes, and wall posts from selective friends right when they happen. This is all part of a larger Mobile strategy that Facebook has begun to promote actively on its Mobile page. If you take a look at Facebook’s new Mobile landing page, you can now “Learn About Mobile Texts,” and activate your account and mobile phone to both send and receive SMS messages to Facebook. Facebook has devised a set of shortcuts for users to write the texts so they can directly update different parts of their accounts or message certain friends. For example, if you want to say you are at John’s party on your status update, you would type “is at john’s party” as an SMS to update your status. If you want to write on John’s wall, you would send a message saying “wall john smith happy bday.” All SMS messages are sent to Facebook at “FBOOK (32665).” You can also choose who you want to get SMS updates from by subscribing to SMS updates on their profile page This is just another example of how Facebook is trying to be more like Twitter. Twitter has always let users send and receive Tweets via SMS. In fact, originally, Twitter was designed for integration with SMS, hence the 140 character limit. Facebook recently redesigned user homepages to look and feel more like Twitter, adding real time-support and a tweaked interface.   Hat tip to Patrick Hawkins. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Google Apps Will Soon Play Friendly With BlackBerry Enterprise Server Posted: 04 May 2009 02:30 PM PDT
Getting Google Apps to work properly on a BlackBerry smartphone has never been the easiest process. Take Gmail, for example: you could use POP or IMAP, but it won’t sync the read status of each message. That’s no big deal, until you go absolutely insane from a status light that never, ever stops blinking. Now you’re stuck using the Gmail Mobile app. Want your BlackBerry to automatically sync your Google Calendar? You’ll need Google Sync. These standalone applications may be reasonable solutions for individuals and small businesses, but installing, configuring, and managing it all just isn’t feasible for those companies with hundreds or thousands of employees all expecting their IT department to just make things work. Fortunately, the whole process is about to get a lot easier. This evening Google is announcing the upcoming availability of the Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server, which allows for proper access to Gmail, Calendar, and Contacts through the default, built-in BlackBerry applications. Read the rest of this entry at MobileCrunch >> Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Facebook: We’re Doing It Live, Sort Of Posted: 04 May 2009 01:58 PM PDT
Back when Facebook first announced its new homepage redesign, it billed it as ‘real-time’, offering users their friends’ most recent activity updates as they happened. Unfortunately, the homepage wasn’t quite as real-time as many of us would have liked - while it did show the most recent updates, the page was static, and you’d have to refresh it if you wanted to see any subsequent updates. Today Facebook is coming one step closer to live updating, with a new status message that appears towards the top of the page whenever there are new updates that you haven’t read yet. The feature will roll out to all users over the next few hours. It’s very similar to the approach being taken by Twitter search, which periodically displays how many new results have appeared since you submitted your query. It’s an improvement, but it isn’t quite the live stream that I think many of us are envisioning. For example, the new FriendFeed (which I think is a huge step up from the old version) features a true live stream, with updates flowing down the page as they happen. It’s a bit strange at first, but it’s also far more engaging than a static page - I often find myself staring at the stream, simply so I can watch the next item to pop up (yes, I am easily amused). Of course, I’m sure Facebook is keeping a close eye on how FriendFeed’s redesign is receieved, as it hasn’t shied away from using the site for R&D before. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Bill Gates v. Warren Buffett On Competing With Google: Charge The Moat! Posted: 04 May 2009 01:50 PM PDT
Gates fires back, saying that Microsoft is undeterred: "Well, technology companies do for a period get in these wonderful positions and, you know, it’s great that there’s somebody willing to attack those moats. Microsoft is undeterred. We look at each one of those crocodiles and we say charge!" Buffet responds “No shark wants to come up against him,” and Gates ends with “So, it is, it is a daunting thing, but consumers benefit when somebody’s willing to take that on and say, hey, we can do a better search product.” For the record, we agree. Google needs competition in the search space, and only Microsoft can compete on that scale. Whether they win or not, the Internet is healthier with more than one search provider. The full clip is below:
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| BlackBerry Partners Fund Announces 2009 BlackBerry Developers Challenge Posted: 04 May 2009 12:21 PM PDT
The 2009 Wireless Enterprise Symposium for BlackBerry Users hasn’t even officially started yet, but news from the event has already started making its way out. The BlackBerry Partners Fund has just announced their second annual BlackBerry Developers Challenge, offering up a hefty cash prize to the developer who brings the best BlackBerry app and business plan to the table. Read the rest of this entry at MobileCrunch>> Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Google Latitude Now Lets You Publish Your Location To Gmail Chat And Your Blog Posted: 04 May 2009 12:12 PM PDT
Google has released two nifty applications for Google Latitude, a feature launched through Google Mobile Maps that allows you to broadcast your location to select friends, family, and colleagues based on the coordinates of your cell phone (via GPS or otherwise). Google says that since Latitude’s launch, users expressed interest in sharing their location with people who are not their Latitude friends. The two apps rolled out today allow users to do this. Google Talk location status automatically updates your Google Talk or Gmail chat status message with your Latitude location. The application will automatically update your status message to your current city as you move, and anyone who can chat with you will be able to see this location status. Your current city is shared with all of your Google Talk or Gmail Chat contacts even if you hide from certain “friends” in Google Latitude. Before these apps, there was no way to broadcast your location to the public at large via Latitude, only to your own Gmail contacts through the Latitude feature. Now you can publicize your location more broadly via Gmail Chat and your blog. Of course there are privacy concerns with publicly sharing your location at all times, but it is already happening and public geo-broadcasting will only become more popular over time. There are upsides to using location-based services to find friends or contacts-or even purse-snatchers- and other services have caught on to this rising trend, including Loopt, FourSquare, and Whrrl. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Plurk Adds Real-Time Search. Doesn’t Mention Twitter. Posted: 04 May 2009 11:41 AM PDT
Plurk, which launched about a year ago, differentiates itself from Twitter mainly in its look and feel. It emphasizes a horizontal scrolling timeline rather than a vertical one. Plurk also gives users set verbs to use for their updates, such as, “parislemon LOVES real-time search.” That’s all well and good, but Twitter still has the users — a lot more of them. Plurk notes that it’s been growing every day since its launch, and is close to seeing its 1 billionth aggregate responses, but that is nothing compared to the company it won’t mention in its post. Unfortunately for Plurk, Twitter also just rolled out its on-site search integration to all users last week. Now, the fact of the matter is, if you really want some key data for something happening in real-time, you’re going to go to Twitter to get it, not Plurk. If you have a lot of friends that use Plurk, it may be interesting to use this search to see what they are doing, but Plurk knows the true value of real-time search lies in the masses — that’s why it’s opened up the public data for search queries. And again, it simply cannot match Twitter on that end.
And this real-time search on Plurk has another weakness too. It will only index actual updates right now and not responses (which make up the 1 billion number I threw out there earlier), so that’s a much less sizable index. Plurk has to do this to be able to search working, as it doesn’t have the team or the funds that Twitter currently has. But kudos to Plurk for getting this done. It is a nice feature to have for any site and will soon be a necessity for these types of micro-messaging services. Track what people are saying about it on Twitter.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| It’s Awe.sm: Create A Powerful Custom URL Shortener For Your Own Domain Posted: 04 May 2009 11:27 AM PDT
You may have noticed over the last few weeks that TechCrunch links on Twitter have had a nifty custom URL, with links looking like tcrn.ch/1A’ instead of more generic codes from TinyURL or Bit.ly. This was due in no small part to the handiwork of our crack team of developers, but it was made possible by a new service launching today called Awe.sm. There are countless URL shortening services available on the web, and they’re probably only going to become even more popular as Twitter continues to catch on with mainstream audiences. But these services come with downsides, like obscuring where a link is pointing to (which makes them a godsend for spammers). Awe.sm is looking to offer publishers an alternative to these generic services, while also offering a powerful analytics engine that offers much more insight as to how their content gets distributed across the web. Every time we publish a post on TechCrunch, Awe.sm generates a handful of links specific to the service it originates on. For example, the shortcode link at the bottom of this post is different from the link that we send out on Twitter through the TechCrunch account. Awe.sm then tracks these links, analyzing how they're spread and storing meta data on each. Even better, the links awe.sm creates are compatible with Google Analytics, so you don’t have to learn how to navigate yet another dashboard. This means that we can get a feel for how our links are spreading throughout each service, quantifying just how effective each one is and adjusting accordingly. And for some services, including Twitterfeed, AddtoAny, and TweetFace, Awe.sm can work in tandem with the service to gather even more data. Readers benefit too - spammers don’t have access to tcrn.ch, so all URLs pointing to that domain can be considered trustworthy. Awe.sm is available beginning today for $99/year, which includes 10,000 URL creations per month (more than most people will ever need) and the option to export your data at any time if you want to stop using Awe.sm. The company’s flagship product is this custom URL shortening service, but it is also going to provide publishers with more tools that will help distribute content across a variety of services to maximize their audiences. The service is also slowly opening up an API to developers, who can build their own applications off the platform. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| While 23andMe Raises $11 Million, Mohr Davidow Sells Stake To Invest In Rival Posted: 04 May 2009 11:03 AM PDT
23andme, a company that helps consumers understand and decipher their genomes, has raised a partial $11 million out of a $24.26 million B round of funding, according to regulatory filings. 23andme, which was co-founded by Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s wife, Anne Wojcicki, raised $9 million in Series A funding from Google, Genentech, New Enterprise Associates, and Mohr Davidow Ventures in 2007. Now PEHub is reporting that Mohr Davidow Ventures divested its stake in 23andme after investing in a direct competitor Navigenics. Losing one of your main investors to a competitor is not a good sign. 23andme maps customers' DNA and helps them find information about their ancestry and their risks of getting certain diseases (Michael tried it last year). Google ended up taking a $3.9 million stake in 23andMe in May 2007, after Brin had personally loaned the company $2.6 million. The debt was repaid after the Google investment. We’re curious as to how much, if any, of this round’s $11 million is Brin’s or Google’s money. Also, we’d like to know why Mohr Davidow shifted its funds to a 23andme’s rival. Navigenics’ service is similar to 23andme’s with slight differences. For example, 23andme offers one package, priced at $399, to test your saliva. Navigenics offers two packages of testing priced at at $499 and $2,499, with the higher priced test including genetic counseling and testing for more health conditions. Most recently, California's Department of Public Health issued cease and desist letters to 23andMe, Navigenics and 11 other genetic testing startups, mandating that the labs demonstrate that they have been certified by both the state and federal government, and, perhaps more importantly, that all genetic tests were ordered by a patient's doctor, which is required by state law. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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