Friday, June 5, 2009

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One Definite Advantage Of The Pre Over The iPhone: Push Gmail

Posted: 05 Jun 2009 08:50 AM PDT

palm-preGoogle has a post today on its blog outlining how many of its applications are built right into the Palm Pre’s webOS. That’s hardly surprising given that it’s an OS built around the web technologies Google knows and loves: HTML, CSS and JavaScript. But buried in the post is a little nugget of information that is sure to enrage some iPhone owners: The Pre will support push Gmail from the get-go.

Push technology allows an email to come to your phone without the user having to specifically call up to the server to get it (known as “pull”). This means near instantaneous receipt of messages as opposed to your phone being set to check for new messages at set intervals, which is how Gmail configured through the iPhone’s mail client currently works. Push Gmail has been rumored for a little while. But now it looks like Google is ready to tout it.

Push email is a feature that made BlackBerry devices so popular back in the day, but now it’s on a number of phones — including the iPhone with MobileMe email and Yahoo Mail. But, despite users clamoring for push Gmail since the iPhone 2.0 software launched last year, it’s still not available. The Pre is able to do it because it supports the IMAP IDLE protocol, according to the post.

Push Gmail also not surprisingly works on Google Android phones. But there is no word on when it will be available on the iPhone other than some short messages in the past that Google was working on it. Considering the budding rivalry between the iPhone and the Pre, and Apple’s close ties to Google, I’m betting we’ll see it come soon to the iPhone as well. Who knows, we could even hear about it at WWDC on Monday — let’s hope.

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OpenSocial Apps Invade MyYahoo: Mint, kaChing, WordPress, And More

Posted: 05 Jun 2009 08:17 AM PDT

mint

Yahoo just opened its doors to a bunch of new OpenSocial apps. People who use MyYahoo as a startpage can now add apps from Mint, KaChing, WordPress, and more. The apps include a small view which appear on your MyYahoo page, but can also open up into a canvas view (which is essentially a dedicated page on Yahoo for that particular app). The Mint app, for instance, gives you a dashboard view of your finances and alerts. The WordPress app lets you do a quick post to your blog right from Yahoo. All together, Yahoo added 14 new apps for users to choose from. You can check your meds (Drugs.com), gas prices (GasBuddy), food and wine pairings (MyRecipes + Snooth), share books (WeRead), or just play Flood-It (LabPixies). You gotta add Flood-It, love that game.

The underlying apps will benefit from getting extra exposure on MyYahoo, but it won’t drive much traffic to their sites. People who want to go deeper into the apps will simply open up a canvas page, much like they do on Facebook. But that is okay, because it shouldn’t really matter where your users interact with your service. For Yahoo, this is yet another step in its effort to be the starting point on the Web for its users. The nice thing about the OpenSocial apps is that users don’t have to leave Yahoo to engage with them. So it is really Yahoo’s way of remaining a destination site and keeping its users within its walls, even if they are using non-Yahoo services. Today, Yahoo is also bringing some new add-ons into Yahoo! Mail, including PayPal and Picnik. And Yahoo! TV (which is built into some Samsung and LG TVs) now lets you watch YouTube videos.

The apps are built on top of the Yahoo! Application Platform (YAP). The canvas views at least support OpenSocial, but app developers still have to tweak the apps to make them Yahoo-friendly. For instance, the “small view” (i.e. the widgets which actually appear on the MyYahoo page) must be developed using “Yahoo! Markup Language” (YML), which is an extension of HTML with more bells and whistles. Yahoo is trying to bring together YML and the OpenSocial Markup Language (OSML), but right now they are forked. But turning an OpenSocial app into one that works inside Yahoo is getting easier. Yahoo joined OpenSocial last year. No word yet on when MyYahoo will start supporting Facebook apps. Oh right, cause that’s never gonna happen.

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Yahoo Mail, Now With Extra Apps: PayPal, Picnik, Zumo Drive and Xoopit

Posted: 05 Jun 2009 08:10 AM PDT

Yahoo is introducing a slew of new applications that aim to complement its free webmail service today. Since December last year, Yahoo features a number of third-party applications inside Yahoo Mail, such as Xoopit, Flickr and Flixster, all in a good effort to reduce the amount of websites you need to visit as well as time you need to spend to perform certain task related to communicating with your friends, relatives or co-workers.

Starting today, that list includes other tools like online payment handling platform PayPal, basic photo editor Picnik, Xoopit service MyPhotos and file sharing application Zumo Drive. If you already have access to the applications Yahoo brought to Yahoo Mail back in December, you'll notice several of the apps the next time you log in, located along the left side of your inbox.

Thanks to the integration, Yahoo mail users get access to a number of useful services without the need to leave the communication interface. That way, Yahoo intends to increase the stickiness of one of its core products, in a relative, open-minded way. After all, users now don’t need to leave the interface to e.g. crop photos, transfer money, share large attachments with others, and so on, and Yahoo is not restricting itself to using or building proprietary tools.

Gmail, your turn.

In related news, Yahoo is also adding a good number of OpenSocial applications to MyYahoo today.

More on today’s Yahoo Mail announcements in this quirky video:

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Ozzie at the Bat

Posted: 05 Jun 2009 08:04 AM PDT

Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie faced down two hardball questions in a Q & A wrap to a conversation with Wired editor Steven Levy at the Churchill Club. On one, a much anticipated question about Google's new realtime collaboration tool Wave, Ozzie had put a lot of thought into the answer. He praised the small startup project as only he could, as a clone of the Groove software he sold to Microsoft while joining the company and taking the CSA reins from Bill Gates. But he also critiqued the Google effort as "anti-Web", suggesting the project took on such a hard problem that its complexity might curb its adoption. Nonetheless, he seemed to relish learning from Google's effort, positioning Live Mesh as a simpler reworking of Groove in the context of integration into the Microsoft OS. For a Silicon Valley audience who probably has paid little notice to Mesh, Ozzie's careful dissection may spark some deeper attention as Wave exits its early pilot stages and grapples with integration into Google Apps.


Google Finance Sheds Its Beta Label Three Years After Launch; Still Can’t Touch Yahoo

Posted: 05 Jun 2009 07:46 AM PDT

The cutesy culture at Google might be coming to an end. The company is finally getting serious by dropping the don’t-blame-us-it’s-only-a-beta label on products that have been around for years. We thought apps like Gmail and Google Docs would be the first to lose the beta label because those are sold to enterprise customers. But Google Finance beat them to it. If you go to Google Finance today, you will see that it has quietly dropped the beta label.

It is about time too. Google Finance launched more than three years ago. By now, it is a fully baked finance site. But Google isn’t making a big deal about the fact that Finance is now a full-fledged product. In fact, it isn’t making a big deal about anything on Google Finance. The Google Finance blog hasn’t been updated since last March.

Maybe Google is keeping quiet about its finance site because, despite going at it for three years and driving traffic straight from Google’s search homepage (ticker symbols pull up stock charts from Google Finance), it hasn’t been able to make much inroads against the most popular stock site out there, Yahoo Finance. According to comScore, Google Finance attracted just 1.4 million unique U.S. visitors in April, compared to Yahoo finance’s 21.7 million. In other words, Yahoo Finance is 15.5 times bigger than Google Finance (see chart below). In the past year, Yahoo Finance added 2.2 million monthly unique users in the U.S. In other words, it added more people than Google Finance’s entire audience. The worldwide numbers show a similar disparity, with Yahoo Finance at 43.5 million uniques vs. 2.4 million for Google Finance.

I find both equally informative, but Yahoo Finance is still my default. Old habits die hard.

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NTT Prototype Phone Lets You Play The Flute, Check Your Blood, And Read E-papers

Posted: 05 Jun 2009 07:32 AM PDT

These are some very early prototypes Japan's No. 1 telecommunications company NTT recently showcased during the JPCA Show 2009 in Tokyo, but they are pretty cool to look at and may show a glimpse of the near future. The basic idea is to one day be able to offer cell phones featuring an interface for attachable and replaceable hardware add-ons. The company's Institute for Advanced Technology is researching on how to transform a conventional cell phone into a "physical", two-piece flute, for example. Users would then attach the upper part of a flute to their cell phone and press its keyboard buttons to make music. Songs can even be shared wirelessly with other users.


IGT Poaches Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business CTO Chris Satchell

Posted: 05 Jun 2009 06:50 AM PDT

Reno, Nevada-based maker of slot machines and other gaming products International Game Technology has hired Chris Satchell to fill the newly-added position of CTO at the publicly listed company.

Satchell comes from Microsoft, where he filled the same role for Redmond’s Interactive Entertainment Business, responsible for technical strategy and execution across the video gaming business including Xbox, Games for Windows, Xbox LIVE and Microsoft Game Studios as well as future platform incubations.

Satchell is what you call an industry veteran, having held positions of executive director and engineering director at the 3DO Company and technical director at Silicon Dreams before joining Microsoft. At Redmond, he was general manager and chief software architect of XNA (Microsoft’s game development platforms and services), director of engineering for Microsoft Game Studios, and development manager for Studio RX (game titles such as Forza Motorsport, Fable and Crackdown).

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Totlol Developer Forced To Shut Down Video Service For Kids

Posted: 05 Jun 2009 06:12 AM PDT

Great idea, good execution, reasonable traction, no future. That’s what it boils down to with the latest entry to the deadpool: Totlol, a video destination site that aggregates the best videos suitable for kids from YouTube with the help of a community of parents and toddlers, is closing down. When Erick reviewed the service back in November 2008, he deemed the service an impressive alternative to traditional Saturday morning TV cartoon watching and “children's Web video for the children of the YouTube generation”.

Unfortunately, while the initiative clearly struck a chord with thousands of parents and their kids, one-man company / Totlol developer Ron Ilan sees no future for the website:

“My focus over the past year has been on making Totlol the best video web site for kids and parents out there. I think I succeeded. It got great reviews. It has been copied and borrowed from. It is packed with features. It has an iPhone web app. It has an active user community. It is growing. Last month Totlol was visited 150,000 times.

While building Totlol I was constantly looking for ways to make it sustainable. I failed. A “normal” website would just “fill up” with ads, but Totlol is not a “normal” site. There are two things that set harsh limits on what can be done - the target audience and the usage of the YouTube platform. With Totlol you just can’t do what other websites do.

It is now June 2009, more than a year has gone by, and I find myself running a website that is loved and growing but has no future. It needs a long term sponsor and I can’t find one. I just can’t support and develop it all by myself anymore.

So, it is now time to say goodbye.”

Vancouver-based Ilan is shutting the site down for good on Canada Day, July 1st.

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Did Bing Just Leapfrog Yahoo Search?

Posted: 05 Jun 2009 04:47 AM PDT

Data from monitoring service StatCounter suggests that Bing, Microsoft’s new search decision engine, has overtaken Yahoo Search as the number two search service in the U.S. and worldwide in large part thanks to stealing market share from leader Google.

The company’s analysis for Thursday finds that in the U.S. Bing overtook Yahoo to take second place on 16.28%, with Yahoo Search currently at 10.22%. For the sake of comparison: Google’s U.S. market share is pegged at 71.47%, and its worldwide share at a whopping 87.62% (vs. 5.62% for Bing and 5.13% for Yahoo).

Are people just test-driving Bing en masse, or does this have anything to do with the fact Bing is forced upon IE6 users? Or is it just because it’s that good and the advertising is already working? Either way, the jump Bing appears to have made since launching merely a couple of days ago is significant, and the drop you see in Google’s share even more so.

Are we witnessing the birth of the first true Google challenger or is this nothing but launch momentum bound to fade away?

(StatCounter claims to measure the search and browsing behavior of over two million users and says it tracks in excess of ten billion pageloads per month over its network of three million websites.)

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Windows Live Movie Maker Due Later This Year. Top Feature Request: Windows XP Support

Posted: 05 Jun 2009 03:16 AM PDT

Mike Torres, Lead Program Manager on Microsoft’s Movie Maker team, has kicked off a series of blog posts about the upcoming release of Windows Live Movie Maker, which is supposed to replace the eponymous desktop video editing software that has come pre-installed on Windows machines ever since Windows ME hit the market.

So far, the application has been in public beta, but many have criticized the inclusion of the program in Live Essentials in such a rudimentary state, claiming it should have been left out until it was ready.

Torres acknowledges as much:

“We also learned a lot by releasing an early beta of Movie Maker last year. People were surprised (or shocked, rather!) at the limited number of transitions, effects, and overall functionality in the program. We wanted to release the beta to start the conversation about the use of the ribbon and some of the overall changes to the software model, but in hindsight, the application just wasn't useful enough for that. So, thanks for bearing with us as we've continued our work on Movie Maker.”

Windows 7, Microsoft’s next operating system, will not come with Movie Maker out of the box, so Microsoft wants to make Windows Live Movie Maker - official release due “later this year” - the primary tool for users who want to do some basic video editing. For that and other reasons, I thought it was pretty funny that one of the oft-requested features Torres cites in the blog post is support for Windows XP, the OS that pre-dates Vista.

Those users are out of luck, by the way, since Microsoft has decided not to add support for XP “given the technical requirements” (Windows XP lacks the new graphics driver model built into Vista and the upcoming Windows 7, as well as DirectX).

It’s one of Microsoft’s greatest tragedies: while they keep trying to better their products and adapt them to rapidly evolving technology in both hardware and software, they also need to factor in those tens of millions of users that are still using older systems and seem reluctant to upgrade to a new OS. The thing is: if Microsoft doesn’t innovate, it inevitably gets left (further) behind online, and when it does the company often alienates a large part of its customer base.

Or what you’d call finding yourself stuck between a rock and a hard place.

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Why is Sequoia Looking Into Associative Browsing Add-on SimilarWeb?

Posted: 05 Jun 2009 12:45 AM PDT

Yahoo’s purchase of FoxyTunes for a rumored $30M legitimized the add-on play as a product strategy for Israeli startups.

I see new startups in this category almost weekly. We’re bearish on add-on plays because the "get them to download, install and use" parts are tricky - and monetizing those users is nearly impossible. In recent months, though, SimilarWeb’s name keeps popping-up and the reason may be the technology it’s spent two years building out. Sequoia Capital Israel, we’ve heard, is spending extra time looking into it and your typical add-on play doesn’t normally make their cut. So what is it about this little company?

SimilarWebOn the surface SimilarWeb is everything you’d expect from a discovery Firefox/IE add-on. Once installed it docks to either side of the browser and displays similar sites, displayed as thumbnails or as a list. Users can rate each result with a thumbs up or down, the latter removing the result all together. Users can also suggest a site by pasting-in a URL. This not only customizes the user’s own results, it also impacts global results for all users. If you don’t want to install the add-on but still want to see it in action, try SimilarSites which pretty much mimics the experience in a web app.

Or Offer, CEO, was visibly uncomfortable every time I tried prying details about their technology, but finally relented with some general explanations: The backbone of SimilarWeb’s technology is based on multiphase analysis, which in plain English means that there are several engines running in the background, analyzing websites based on different mechanics, metrics and workflows. These include: user browsing trends, user ratings, tag analysis, ecosphere analysis, semantic breakdowns, and automated background research.

The company claims to have mapped millions of sites, and adding tens of thousands daily. This means that it will always suggest other sites, regardless of whether the site the user is currently on is a popular one, or one much further down the tail.

Nothing of the above stands out particularly or sheds light as to what’s so interesting about this company. A technical due diligence may be what’s necessary to truly understand SimilarWeb’s edge. No matter how you look at it though, the company is doing what it needs to be taken seriously… It has amassed thousands of users in the three months since its launch. Dr. Yossi Vardi is an investor and they seem to have Sequoia’s attention. Must be satisfying after two year’s worth of coding under the radar.

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Google Releases Dev Version Of Chrome For Mac And Linux. But It Doesn’t Want You To Use It.

Posted: 04 Jun 2009 07:56 PM PDT

Here’s some bittersweet news for those of you eagerly awaiting Google’s Chrome browser for Mac or Linux: tonight Google is publicly releasing developer versions of the Chrome browser for both operating systems, and anyone will be able to download them. Unfortunately you won’t be able to ditch Safari or Firefox just yet — these builds are not close to stable, and you won’t be able to use them on a day to day basis. But you’ll still be able to put something in your Dock that says Chrome, so that’s something, right?

For those who haven’t been paying close attention to the progress of Google’s browser on platforms other than Windows, you’ve actually been able to download builds of the open-source project behind Chrome, which is called Chromium, for quite a while. In our testing these builds have proven to be quite speedy, somewhat stable, but nowhere near ready for prime time — they don’t yet support plugins (including Flash), and there are a number of options that you’d expect out of a browser that simply aren’t there yet.

This developer version of Chrome is essentially a rebranded version of the Chromium project, and doesn’t represent a much-improved new branch that Google has quietly been working on. It still doesn’t support plugins, and there are still some other missing key features, like printing.

My initial impression to tonight’s news was that, while the stable version of Chrome might be a little ways away, tonight’s release might indicate that we’re at least getting close. Unfortunately, it still sounds like we have a while to wait (or at least, Google doesn’t want to get our hopes up early). This is the first part of Google’s three step release channel, which begins with the Developer version, continues to Beta, and finishes up with a build the company is comfortable deeming ‘Stable’. We’re at step one.

Google’s spokesman went as far as to say that the company doesn’t want us to download this version of Chrome unless we’re ready for frequent crashes and a generally not-so-great experience. But if you’re looking to start testing the evolving browser under the name ‘Chrome’ rather than ‘Chromium’, then have at it.

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Liveblogging Microsoft’s Ray Ozzie on “The Potential Of Cloud Computing”

Posted: 04 Jun 2009 07:40 PM PDT

We're at the Churchill Club's "Potential of Cloud Computing" event, where Wired's Senior Writer Steven Levy is interviewing Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie. Ozzie made some interesting predictions on the future of cloud computing a few weeks ago at J.P. Morgan's Technology, Media and Telecom Conference. Microsoft is continuing to assert its position in the cloud as the release of its cloud computing platform, Azure, draws near.


Ex-MySpace Execs Prepping To Unveil Blue Rover Labs, Now Hiring

Posted: 04 Jun 2009 07:39 PM PDT

Earlier this year three key MySpace executives jumped ship only two months before the company’s major reorg. Since then they’ve been pretty quiet — we’ve learned that they raised a $10 million funding round led by August Capital and Redpoint Ventures, but aside from that there hasn’t been much to go on. Now, more details are starting to emerge: we know that the company will be called Blue Rover Labs, and we’ve gotten our first glimpse of the homepage.

Earlier this afternoon each of the team members tweeted out a link to Blue Rover Labs at approximately the same time, with no explanation given. The page is quite sparse, with little on it other than a list of the current staff. The three MySpace execs, Amit Kapur (former MySpace COO), Steve Pearman (former MySpace SVP Product Strategy) and Jim Benedetto (former MySpace VP Technology) have apparently brought on Kunal Anand, a former MySpace Senior Technical Lead (and later, Grockit Engineer) as a fourth member.

The company describes itself as a “well-funded stealth internet startup”, and includes a note telling us that it’s happening “right now” and to “stay tuned for exciting news”. There’s also a link to a hiring page, where the company writes that it’s looking for “PHP ninjas, LAMP architects, memcached gurus, rock-star product managers, UX/UI experts, and other swiss-army-knife hackers”.

That’s about all we know so far, but it sounds like more details will be coming soon. We’re optimistic about this team, and eager to see what they come up with.

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Modeling The True Value Of Social Networks: 2009 Edition

Posted: 04 Jun 2009 04:22 PM PDT

A year ago we modeled out the true value of various social networks based on the idea that users in high-value online advertising markets like Japan, the UK and the U.S. were worth more (financially speaking) than those in lower value online advertising markets. Facebook had recently become the largest worldwide social network in terms of users, but based on our model MySpace was still by far the most valuable social network.

We’ve now remodeled social network valuations based on current user numbers and Facebook’s most recent $10 billion valuation. The results are dramatically different.

Based on the original year-old model, if Facebook was worth $15 billion (their then-current valuation), MySpace, with far more U.S. users, was worth nearly $20 billion:

Our model takes Comscore data for available countries and regions. We've graphed each of 26 well known social networks with the data we have been able to collect. We've then calculated the average advertising spend (estimated by PriceWaterhouseCoopers in a recent report) for each person online in each of those countries. For example, in the U.S., the total 2008 estimated Internet advertising spend is $25.2 billion. We've divided that by the number of people online in the U.S. according to Comscore (191 million), to get an average Internet spend per person of $132. View the raw data and calculations here.

The U.S., by the way, is only the 4th most valuable market per Internet user, trailing The UK ($213), Australia ($148) and Denmark ($144).

We've then multiplied the average Internet spend per user in each market with the number of unique users each social network has in that market, essentially creating a "weighted average" based on the advertising dollars chasing users. If a social network has more users in the U.S., Japan, the UK, Germany, Australia, and other bigger advertising networks, they will have a higher weighted average valuation.

We believe this model is an effective way to rank various competing social networks. It bumps down networks like Orkut and Friendster who have tens of millions of users in markets with very little advertising spend, and bumps up networks with lots of users in higher value markets.

Based on this model, MySpace is by far the most valuable social network. Second place Facebook has just 75% of the value of MySpace (even though it now has more users), followed by Bebo (26% of MySpace value), Hi5 and Amebio. LinkedIn comes in at no. 11, at 6% of MySpace's value.

The new model takes into account the dramatic rise of Facebook usage over the last year, the massive recent decline in MySpace usage, and less dramatic changes in the other social networks. We’ve also modeled out the various valuations with the old Bebo ($850 million) and LinkedIn ($1 billion) valuations as pivot points. We’ve also added Twitter to the list just for kicks.

The bottom line: If Facebook is worth $10 billion today, MySpace is worth just $6.5 billion. Bebo is worth $1.8 billion, Twitter is worth $1.7 billion and LinkedIn is worth $0.8 billion. Facebook also accounts for 37% of all social networking value points in our model. Another way of saying this: If Facebook is worth $10 billion, the value of the entire social networking industry is $27.1 billion.

Lots of charts and graphs below. The full model is here if you want to look at all the data (I recommend zooming unless you have super vision). Thanks to TechCrunch intern Dan Romero for running the new model.
chart

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A Dash Of Navigation Software In Your Next Blackberry

Posted: 04 Jun 2009 04:20 PM PDT

Research In Motion has acquired Dash Navigation for an undisclosed amount, according to a spokeswoman for RIM. Dash, which makes makes the car GPS device Dash Express (read our review of the device here), had been struggling to compete with GPS device competitors like Garmin, and shifted its focus away from the hardware business last year towards selling its software to other device manufacturers.

Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia backed, Dash originally manufactured a network-connected GPS that pooled the location and speeds of all nearby Dash owners to give them back real-time traffic reports. The device has some notable features but couldn’t build a large user base and was forced to change its business plan and lay off 65% of its staff in November. We wrote back then that Dash’s API program was strong, so switching to licensing its software made sense. But the primary appeal of Dash’s software, which is built around being connected to other Dash owners and sharing driving data with each other, could be lost if the software is licensed by a device manufacturer.

RIM refused to comment on how Dash will be incorporated into its business but it’s safe to assume that the company will use Dash’s technology to upgrade the GPS in their devices in some capacity. This is similar to Nokia’s acquisition of digital map maker NAVTEQ in 2008 to help add map technology to their devices. Although RIM’s acquisition is on a slightly smaller scale, Dash’s technology does give RIM some important mapping and car navigation technologies, many of which can be applied more broadly to cell phones. If the connectivity feature of Dash is maintained by RIM, this could prove to be a useful tool for Blackberry users, given how many Blackberry devices are out there.

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Google Opens Up Internal Speed Tool To Developers

Posted: 04 Jun 2009 03:58 PM PDT

One of the most fundamental reasons for Google’s success is the site’s speed — search queries typically take a fraction of a second, and most of the company’s other services are usually very snappy as well (save for Gmail, which occasionally bogs down). Part of this speed can be attributed to the company’s obsession with minimalist design and its vast server farms, but you can be sure there’s no shortage of optimization that’s going on to make sure pages load as quickly as possible on the front end, too.

To help streamline its sites, Google has been using an internal tool called Page Speed, and starting today it’s opening up the tool to the developer community. The newly open-sourced tool is a Firefox plugin that integrates with Firebug, making suggestions on how to speed up your site based on best practices.

From the Google blog post:

For example, Page Speed automatically optimizes images for you, giving you a compressed image that you can use immediately on your web site. It also identifies issues such as JavaScript and CSS loaded by your page that wasn’t actually used to display the page, which can help reduce time your users spend waiting for the page to download and display.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because Yahoo offers a similar tool for Firefox called YSlow, which is also meant to help developers streamline their websites.




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It’s Gonna Be A Summer Of SmartPhone Love

Posted: 04 Jun 2009 03:22 PM PDT

Can you feel the tingling in the air? If you haven’t found it already,you will. This is going to be the summer of love. I am talking, of course, about smartphone love. The serenades have already begun for the June 6 launch of the Palm Pre. Next week, Apple will reveal it’s next iPhone (you know MG is going to get one). Blackberry might come out with its second Storm by summer’s end. And the lovefest will continue throughout the year with launch after launch of new Android phones as well. It will be practically nonstop. I hope you can handle it.

These aren’t just attractive new playthings. They represent something much deeper and more meaningful. They represent a major transition in both the mobile phone industry and in mobile computing. The iPhone paved the way, but now the Web phones are ready to take over the world. Their relative numbers compared to basic feature phones may still be small, but their mindshare and profits are large. Already, the iPhone and Blackberry Web phones are gobbling up a majority of the industry’s profits.

Why? It has nothing to do with making phone calls. The Web in your pocket means you always have something to read, you are always connected to your digital network, and you can always reach out and Tweet someone or poke them or send them an email. And if all that fails, you can still call. But the problem with actually speaking to someone is that you can only carry on one conversation at a time. With a Web phone, you can keep track of your entire conversation stream.

The iPhone has been around long enough that everybody wants one. But if you don’t like AT&T, now there will soon be plenty of other options. Everyone is obsessing about the Palm Pre today, with its Twitter search and soon-to-be blocked iTunes syncing (maybe). John Biggs at CrunchGear thinks the Pre will be an also-ran, but it will probably be the biggest-selling also-ran in Sprint’s lineup. Today’s preliminary Plam Pre excitement will soon be overtaken by iPhone mania (it might have a glowing apple!).

The new iPhone will still be missing some crucial things, like the ability to run more than one app at the same time. And this will leave an opening for BlackBerry to keep growing side-by-side the iPhone and for the the steady march of Android into the realm of significance numbers-wise. Before you know it, everyone will be carrying a Web phone of one kind or another. But be careful. These shiny new beacons promise to free your mind, but they also have the power to drag you down. They demand attention at all times, even when you are walking down the street. Remember, it is important to look away every now and then, otherwise you might get hit by a car.

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The Short Lifespan Of The iPhone

Posted: 04 Jun 2009 03:01 PM PDT

3187770478_3486591a7bFor the past several weeks, I’ve been noticing something about my iPhone: Severe slowness. I put it sleep and wake it back up, clear its memory (with an app), restart it and even sometimes manually reboot it — some of these methods alleviate the symptoms, sometimes. Other times, I have to just deal with it being too unbearably slow to do much of anything, including the basic phone functionality like placing a call or sending a text message. And sometimes the iPhone gets really hot, even when it’s in its sleep state, and I’ll turn it back on to see the battery mostly drained.

And while I’m not above simply complaining about my own problems with tech, I’ve talked to a lot of other people recently who are having the exact same issues. I’m not sure why this is happening. Some people think it’s because the device has been around for about a year now, and a lot of us have loaded a ton of apps on the thing. I should probably do a factory reset of the device, wiping it on iTunes. But as anyone who has done that before will know, that’s a big pain in the ass.

So my solution is an expensive one: Wait for the new iPhone. We all know it’s coming, it’s just a matter of when. There still seems to be some debate if Apple will actually announce it at the WWDC keynote on Monday (which we’ll be at), or if it will use that event to focus on OS X Snow Leopard and the new iPhone OS 3.0. But seeing as Apple already had an event for the new iPhone OS, I think we will see the new hardware unveiled at the event, just like we did last year. Though I suspect it won’t be available in stores until later on, probably July, once again.

The new hardware, which is believed to be significantly faster, will solve my issue — for now. But there’s a larger question behind it: Should you really have to update your phone once a year?

The answer is of course, no — but just as with the iPod line of products, Apple sets their yearly update cycles knowing full well that a lot of current model owners are going to opt to upgrade. But what if I didn’t want to? Would I be stuck with this phone that is driving me crazy? Has Apple developed a device which is only optimized to be used for about a year? It may sound crazy, but even if you chalk mine and everyone else’s performance issues up to some weird too-many-app bug, you still have the battery issue to consider.

The iPhone doesn’t have a battery that a user can easily replace. While some people complain about this for long trips, the real issue is that battery performance wears down over time after a certain number of recharge cycles. And after about a year with this iPhone 3G, the battery life is noticeably worse than it was when I got it. So if I did want to keep this device, I would have to send it in to have the battery replaced for me. Guess how much that costs? Just about $100.

picture-7Hopefully, that helps you see a big issue: Aside from the performance issues, do I pay Apple $100, and lose my phone for a few days while they replace the battery, or do I pay a little bit more to get an entirely new phone?

AT&T makes this a pretty easy call by allowing us to pay the subsidized contract price ($199 or $299 versus $499 or $599), even though we technically haven’t completed our last 2-year contracts. And it’s of course a smart move, because it’s another two years of lock-in that they have over us.

At some point, you’re going to want to get out of that contract. But Apple’s yearly iPhone refresh combined with the 2-year contract means that for many of us, we’re unlikely to ever see our contract time dip under a year to go. It’s a vicious cycle.

I bought the original iPhone two years ago, and right before the iPhone 3G came along, I wondered what would happen to all those first generation models — would they all go to heaven? The answer is no. Instead, they either went to family members, to eBay, or in my case, to the side of my bed as an ultra expensive alarm clock.

My contract for that first iPhone would just be expiring on it right now — something which Palm knows, and why it wanted to launch the Pre now. The Pre sounds great. I know some people who have used one and say that it is a really nice phone. But most of them also say that it won’t replace the iPhone for them, so it’s not really even something I’m considering at this point. The amount of money and time I’ve invested in my app collection is reason alone for me not to switch. Oh yes, but I couldn’t anyway since I have a year left on my AT&T contract.

Instead, I will buy this third generation iPhone and be stuck with two ultra expensive alarm clocks. Actually, I not even sure my iPhone 3G will work in that capacity at that point. I still believe it’s one of the best tech purchases I’ve ever made, but it’d be nicer if it had a lifespan of more than a year.

[photos: flickr/magic quote and kennymatic]

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Tesla To Open Three European Showrooms

Posted: 04 Jun 2009 02:02 PM PDT

Tesla, which has now delivered 500 Roadsters, will be opening several new sales showrooms this summer, the company says. Currently the company has showrooms only in California. Three of the new showrooms will be in Europe - London, Monaco and Munich. New York, Seattle, Chicago and Miami are also on the list.

The company says that the first Roadsters will be delivered to European buyers this summer. At least three Tesla buyers have exported their cars to Europe already, though (one each to Germany, Norway and Spain).

The company, which is now more valuable than General Motors, recently unveiled its second model, the Model S.

The company also says that it’s looking for showroom locations in Washington DC and Toronto.

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Here’s What’s Wrong With the Palm Pre

Posted: 04 Jun 2009 01:15 PM PDT

The Palm Pre—you may have heard of it—comes out on Saturday, but all sorts of media "outlets" have already published their reviews; I don't know when our review will go up. And since it's my feeling that most of you already assume the phone is "good," I've gone ahead and collected a few excerpts of the more critical points. You know, the part of the review that goes something like, "Now, the Palm Pre isn't perfect; we found a few problems with it. And they are..." That part. So let's get on with it. From the Wall Street Journal :


If You Hate Posts About Twitter, #BlameDrewsCancer

Posted: 04 Jun 2009 01:06 PM PDT

picture-5Quite often when we write about something related to Twitter, it’s funny or stupid — or both. But it’s important to remember that Twitter at its core is a powerful medium for disseminating information. And sometimes that power can be used for good — like fighting cancer.

Drew Olanoff, a man fairly well known in web circles, recently got some horrible news: He has cancer. That’s just about the worst news anyone could ever want to hear. But rather than sit around and feel bad about it, Olanoff decided to be proactive and use the bad situation for some good. He teamed up with developer Mike Demers to create Blame Drew’s Cancer, a site that asks you to blame everything that goes wrong in your life, on Drew’s cancer.

What’s great about this is that people love to use Twitter to bitch about things. Hell, I do it just as much as anyone — it’s a great past time. But usually those tweets just come off as lame complaints to most of your followers. But now, using the #BlameDrewsCancer hash-tag, all of these tweets are pulled into the site, where they will be tallied to lead to what will hopefully be a large donation to the American Cancer Society and the Make a Wish Foundation.

As a person who’s been heavily involved in the web space for some time across a range of companies, Olanoff realized Twitter was a perfect medium for his message. And just a few days after the launch of the site, it’s working to great effect. This morning, the cause was a top trending topic on Twitter. And even Lance Armstrong, who has just under 1 million followers, tweeted it out.

Here are some other good ones:

betosando I #BlameDrewsCancer for the War in the Middle East

Farhoudi I blame the US’s 3-0 loss to Costa Rica on Drew’s cancer. http://blamedrewscancer.com

sneezymonica I #BlameDrewsCancer for my sore feet! http://blamedrewscancer.com/

rhonigwachs I #blamedrewscancer for proprietary linux drivers

Luckily, Olanoff’s Hodgkins Lymphoma has a good cure rate. And we wish him the best of luck as he undergoes months of treatment. But what he needs right now is for some companies to step up to the plate and pledge to donate $1 for every unique person that tweets out his #blamedrewscancer message.

Pretty much every company these days is talking about how it can use Twitter to futher its brand. I see no better opportunity than this, right here, right now.

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SplashCast Throws In The Towel On User-Generated Content; Looking For A Buyer

Posted: 04 Jun 2009 12:06 PM PDT

The allure of building a business around user-generated content is fading fast. SplashCast, a company which launched two years ago around the notion of helping consumers put together videos, text, graphics, and music in embeddable broadcast “channels,” is discontinuing its original product. “Most of us would rather consume than create. This is one of the big ticket findings of the Web 2.0 technology wave,” concludes CEO Michael Berkley.

And after failing to raise a B round of funding, he is now trying to sell the company. Instead of trying to make money off of user-generated broadcast channels, he is focusing on his newer Social TV product, which adds social features such as chat, commenting, and polling to professionally-produced videos.

The SplashCast product being discontinued was simply too complicated for most consumers. It was a full content-management system which allowed consumers to bring together videos with images, text, and sound. In a candid assessment of why it fell flat, Berkley says: “We were hoping to launch a publishing revolution. What we found, however, is that very few users are willing and able to make an ongoing commitment to publishing and distributing content. Lots of users test; few stick with it.”

While more than 100,000 SplashCast accounts have been created, “only a few thousand” use the product regularly, he tells me. Partly, this is the curse of building a business which relies on the creativity of users. “Like so many other Web 2.0 companies,” admits Berkley, “we simply haven’t found a way to meaningfully monetize user generated content. Users are loathe to pay meaningful subscription fees. Furthermore, advertising on user-generated video content hasn’t played out—just ask YouTube.” If only a tiny fraction of users create anything worthwhile, you either need a whole lot of users to make that work or you need to be able to attract the most creative people to your product.

But partly, SplashCast also suffered from the curse of not keeping things simple. Berkley is taking that to heart by shifting the company’s remaining resources to making Hulu-quality videos more social on Facebook and MySpace. Berkley says SplashCast videos reach 5.8 million unique viewers per month and it streams 7.2 million videos. A full 90 percent of those streams come from only 25 SplashCast channels, mostly centered around network TV shows like 24 and the Simpsons or major label music artists.

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Goojet Raises €6 Million For Mobile Widget And Communication Platform

Posted: 04 Jun 2009 11:54 AM PDT

French startup Goojet is coming out with an updated version of its mobile content and services suite after getting some runway with the beta product it launched about a year ago, six months after winning the Le Web 3 startup competition. At the same time, the company is announcing that it has raised its second round of financing to the tune of €6 million (approx. $8.5 million) after raising initial funding for the project back in December 2007. The total amount of capital invested in the company is now at a healthy €8.3 million. Like its Series A round, the money comes from Partech International, Elaia Partners and IRDI-ICSO. Paris-based VC firm Orkos Capital participated in the new round as well for the first time.


Introducing The Pancake: A Less Annoying Way To Move Through Google Street View

Posted: 04 Jun 2009 11:15 AM PDT

Moving around in Google Street View is not always intuitive. You always end up clicking aimlessly a few times before you can really figure out how to move about. Well, now navigating within Street View is easier thanks to the “pancake.” Google is adding a useful tool called the “pancake” to Street View on Google Maps that lets you travel to a new point within a photo panorama by double clicking on the place or object you would like to see. Google says that it has been able to accomplish this by making a compact representation of the building facade and road geometry for all the Street View panoramas. As you move your mouse within Street View, you’ll see the pancake, which you can move up and down a street and then click on a restaurant, road, building or object nearby. The pancake is shown as a circle on roads and a rectangle when following the facade of a building.

The pancake will transport you to the best view of an object in that direction. Google also says that the pancake will often show a little magnifying glass in the bottom right to indicate that double clicking will zoom in on the current image rather than transport you to a closer location.

The pancake also prevents you from getting lost. If you want to go back to the original view of the street from the pancake, you can hit the return arrow in the address box to get back to the previous location. Previously, you could only move backward and forward along a street to view the next panorama, so the ability to quickly zoom in from anywhere to various spots along a particular road actually makes navigating within Street View much less frustrating.

Check it out in the embedded interactive Street View below, or watch the video:


View Larger Map

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