The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Hands-On Review Of Jolicloud, The iPhonesque OS For Netbooks
- I Don’t Know If The New iPhone Has A Frontal Camera, But It Should
- If You Didn’t Get A Pre Today, You Missed This Kick-Ass Startup Video
- Pre-crazed Granny Takes Out A Chicago Sprint Store
- Ouch
- 8 People Palm Poached To Make The Pre
- The Early Google Papers: Rajeev Motwani’s Contributions To Search
- Facing A Lawsuit And Complaints From Celebs, Twitter Launches Verified Accounts
- Are Social Network Aggregators The New Cheese?
- On Twitter, Most People Are Sheep: 80 Percent Of Accounts Have Fewer Than 10 Followers
| Hands-On Review Of Jolicloud, The iPhonesque OS For Netbooks Posted: 07 Jun 2009 06:14 AM PDT
Installation Jolicloud is still in alpha mode, and there’s no denying that there are a lot of kinks left to iron out before it’s ready for public use. For instance, the process of installing it on my Windows XP-powered netbook was frankly a pain in the butt. You need to download an IMG file from the Jolicloud website, ‘burn’ it to a USB key and boot your computer from that drive. But, not only did mine not boot automatically from the key (I had to dive into the BIOS and change the order manually), it also completely froze at the first installation screen. I only got it to start up once out of perhaps 30 attempts, which was frustrating. And the one time I got into the OS (I didn’t install it, just ran it on test mode) I wasn’t even able to install any applications, which is supposed the main USP for the system. After the first day of not being able to effectively try Jolicloud, Krim advised me to try using another USB key, and lo and behold everything went fine from there. The speed of booting up and shutting down have been impressive ever since I finally installed the full system on my computer.
Using Jolicloud I’ve now had Jolicloud installed on my netbook for about three days now, alongside Windows XP to make sure, and already I don’t think I’m going to be booting up Windows much from now on. As you could tell from the screenshots we received earlier this week, a lot of thought has been put into the design of the OS, adapting it for optimal use on smaller screens. Even when you run Jolicloud for the first time, everything is quite visual, making it easy to navigate even when you’re not familiar with all the buttons and processes. Compare it to switching from Windows Mobile 6 on your smartphone to the iPhone OS: it’s incredibly easy to get used to, and it’s just a better general user experience, particularly if you use a lot of web applications. I can’t wait to try Jolicloud on a touch-screen enabled netbook to see how it stacks up. I installed a bunch of applications on Jolicloud in just a matter of minutes, web-based ones such as Gmail, Twitter, Flickr, Wikipedia, but also tools usually run from desktops like Boxee and Skype. All behave the way they should, and smoothly at that. The only hick-up I’ve noticed so far is that sometimes I’ll get a blank screen when you start up applications from the My Jolicloud interface for no apparent reason, but apart from that it’s all pretty impressive, and fast. I particularly like the fact that there’s a persistent bar at the top of your screen that puts all the instances you’re running neatly into tabs with icons, making for seamless switching between applications (including Firefox, which comes pre-installed and enables you to do whatever you’re used to on your current computer with Mozilla’s browser, including installing add-ons and plug-ins). The team is currently talking to application developers in order to get more on board, and even some that are creating Jolicloud-specific tools.
A bit of social You can ’subscribe’ to other Jolicloud users, which means you’ll get updates on what they’ve installed on their own netbooks. This should provide a great way to get to know the best applications when eventually the list of tools grows too big for users to easily find their way. It’s also a good way for Jolicloud to analyze who is using what on which type of machine (this reminds me a bit of Wakoopa). It could prove beneficial for Jolicloud to integrate more social features in the future, like the ability to communicate directly with other users or instantly share applications, reviews, screenshots, etc. on the multitude of social networking services out there.
Technology Jolicloud builds upon Debian and Ubuntu 9.04, tweaked to be more suitable for computers that are in general relatively low on disk storage and memory, and have smaller screens. Hence, they are suited for the so-called netbooks and offer little added value for more powerful laptops. To run applications, Jolicloud uses either custom Linux builds for services or Mozilla Prism for anything that can run off the web. For Windows-only products, there’s Wine, an emulator that runs those applications in a virtual desktop. Conclusion The frustrating experience with the initial installation aside, Jolicloud - especially for an alpha release - is impressive. Particularly for people like myself, who use a lot of web applications on a daily basis, it’s definitely a step up from running Windows XP on my Acer Aspire ONE. The design of the system is spot on, the processes are straightforward and everything ‘just works’. That said, I have my doubts about the potential of the OS to become more than a niche product for people aleady using a niche product (netbooks), and it will be interesting how much of a competitor Google turns out to be with Android, which is poised to become a netbook-specific OS in the coming years. I wouldn’t mind having Krim prove me wrong and invent the future with his small team instead, though. (If you want to give Jolicloud a whirl yourself, your best chance is to put yourself on the waiting list and well, wait. If you’ve received a promo USB key at an event in the past, it likely that doesn’t work anymore) Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| I Don’t Know If The New iPhone Has A Frontal Camera, But It Should Posted: 06 Jun 2009 08:57 PM PDT
While at first glance, that device looks nearly identical to the current iPhone (it seems like that will definitely be the case), there is one big difference: A front-facing camera. This is interesting to me for two reasons, because it could jump-start two trends: Mobile video chatting and the self-picture. Now, there are a few other devices capable of doing mobile video chatting, but none have taken off yet. But an Apple chat app built exactly like its iChat app on Mac computers, could change that immediately. Just imagine placing a call to another iPhone user (or maybe even someone using iChat on their computer) and being able to hit a button and see their face. It’s something that seems like an obvious direction to go in, and there’s been talk about it before, and patents filed indicating such functionality. Assuming this new iPhone is significantly faster than the current model, it certainly seems like a possibility. But there’s a major x-factor pointing in the direction of why this won’t happen: AT&T. Considering that it gets all worked up when developers try to create a Sling app that can stream video over its 3G network, and blocks it (it’s Wi-Fi only), just imagine what it will think about two-way live streaming video chat.
Of course, that stance is pretty ridiculous considering that AT&T allows the Sling app to work on other phones on its network. But given what it knows about how much bandwidth iPhone users use versus the other smartphones out there, AT&T made a play to attempt to salvage its often sketchy network. But it’s possible that if AT&T really is doing massive upgrades to its network to get ready for this new iPhone which will supposedly connect to the Internet at higher speeds, that the company could allow video streaming as long as it’s from Apple. After all, it doesn’t want to piss off Apple, lest it expands its business to other carriers, like Verizon, as well. Or Apple/AT&T could just say that this mobile video chatting is limited to Wi-Fi, like the Sling player is. But that would be pretty lame. But it seems logical that sooner or later this functionality will come to the majority of smartphones. And you can bet that Apple wants to be credited with jump-starting this trend. And I think it would work because while video chat is cool on the computer (most people still seem to be impressed when they see a video iChat for the first time), it sucks being tethered to a desk and chair to use it. Using it on the go could be much more interesting. Naturally, some people would hate such a feature, but it would be one of those things that eventually became a norm, I think. It wouldn’t replace straight-up voice calling obviously, but it would be a nice option.
The other trend I noted above is one that is actually already alive and well: Self-picture taking. People have been doing this a lot pretty much since the dawn of the digital camera since you can immediately take a picture, see how you look, then delete and re-take if it’s bad. And people seem to love doing it on the iPhone already, as you can see clearly on all the web’s photo sharing sites. But as it stands right now, you either have to take the picture in a mirror, which just looks odd because you’re holding your iPhone in the picture — and you’re well, taking a picture in a mirror of yourself. Or you have to hold the iPhone away from you to snap the shot. But that often results in a crap picture because the iPhone’s camera sucks and doesn’t have a steady-cam features (though it seems likely that the new one will).
But a forward-facing camera could be a game-changer for the vain — which, come on, we all are in some regard. And it’s something that Apple already has experience with thanks to its Photo Booth program which is included in OS X. For those that haven’t used it, basically it just allows you to use a computer’s camera to take a picture of yourself and you can do weird things to the picture like give yourself a giant head. I could definitely see Apple including that same funtionality on the iPhone. So again, I don’t know if these latest pictures are legit at all. They look pretty good, but there is odd issues with focus, blurriness and illuminated dots. But that really doesn’t matter, eventually I think Apple will add a forward-facing camera to the iPhone to lead the way in the mobile video chatting and self-picture trends — it just may not be announced this Monday. [photos via Gizmodo and Engadget] Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| If You Didn’t Get A Pre Today, You Missed This Kick-Ass Startup Video Posted: 06 Jun 2009 06:50 PM PDT
So for those of us who didn’t get one today, here’s the video that plays upon starting up your new Pre. It’s pretty damn awesome — much better than the iPhone’s startup screen — which I’ve been seeing a lot of lately. This one actually reminds me a bit of the cool Apple TV startup video. [via PopWuping] Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Pre-crazed Granny Takes Out A Chicago Sprint Store Posted: 06 Jun 2009 06:25 PM PDT
Check out the video embedded below from NBC Chicago. It’s pretty incredible. Joking aside, I highly doubt the elderly woman behind the wheel actually wanted a Pre and more importantly, she was fine aside from a few bruises. But as you can see, the store didn’t fare so well. And it was probably the worst time something like that could have happened given the Pre launch today. The store apparently said it would still be ready for the 8 AM launch. Anyone in Chicago know if they made it? Perhaps having absolutely no storefront helped with the crowd flow. Let’s just hope they cleaned up the broken glass and picked up the poor fallen giant Pre display. [via PalmPre.org] [photo: Jesus Leal Jr.] Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Posted: 06 Jun 2009 04:14 PM PDT So. The Gillmor Gang was today. We started things off with a nice talk about Rajeev Motwani and his contributions to the community. That was nice. Then Leo Laporte started talking about the Palm Pre, which launches today. That part of the show, which turned as ugly as a show can turn, is in the video clip embedded above. The unedited audio file of the show is here, you can listen to the pre show banter and the first bit about Motwani before the train wreck. I ask Leo whether he bought the Pre or got it free and in advance of the launch, which I think is relevant because Palm is being very picky about who they give them out to. We were promised one but it wasn’t delivered. We suspect our critical coverage may be the reason, one other blogger I spoke to is in the same situation. Many of the pre-launch reviews are overtly positive, and we’re comparing those reviews where the journalist got a free Pre in advance of launch to the less cheerful ones written by people who had to pay for the device. Getting a high profile device in advance is a huge advantage, and is a conflict of interest that should be disclosed in our opinion. But the catch is this - as long as Palm sends out a letter with the device asking for it back in a week, it isn’t considered a financial conflict of interest. The fact that few people ever return them is rarely brought up. Anyway, Leo lost it and shut down the show. I’ve had a lot of interactions with him and they’ve always been positive. Or at least I thought so. I wasn’t watching the video live during the show and I really thought Leo was joking until the very end (as did Steve Gillmor and Loren Feldman, who were chuckling in the video). My “what are you going to do about it” comment doesn’t sound so great in hindsight. But I really did just think he was joking around. We’re under so much scrutiny at TechCrunch (read the last two paragraphs here) that i guess I don’t always stop and think about the fact that most journalists are never questioned, and don’t react particularly well when they are. We were once, for example, accused of a conflict of interest when we wrote a story about a product and I happened to be a “friend” on Facebook with the PR person for the company. So you could say I’ve had to develop a thick skin when it comes to questions about conflicts of interest. And I don’t consider asking a journalist to disclose if a device he says he loves was given to him for free or not as being a particularly trollish thing to do. I’m bummed this has to be an issue on a day that we’re all mourning the loss of such an important member of our community. And I’m sad that my professional relationship with Leo is apparently over. I apologize to you, Leo. I didn’t mean to imply that you were being unethical. I just think that, given the story that’s brewing about favoritism at Palm, it was important to disclose whether you paid for that Pre, and/or got it in advance. I think I’ll go take Laguna for a walk now and try this blogging thing again tomorrow. I know a lot of you are going to be commenting strongly on this. Comment moderation is going to be tight on this post, so keep it constructive. Update: comment from Leo below:
Update: Many comments are complaining about comment moderation. This isn’t about free speech. It’s about dozens of death threats and hundreds of others saying pretty horrible things about one of of us. You may think that your comment needs to get heard and that calling for someone to die shouldn’t be taken seriously. But multiply that by hundreds and maybe you’ll get a sense of this. I was rude. I made the problem worse by saying things because I thought he was play-mad. and then i apologized. i may be a lot of things but i don’t think i deserve to die over this. please. stop. i can’t deal with the death threats after what happened last year and then this year in europe. leo won. you guys won. i surrender. just stop. please. stop. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| 8 People Palm Poached To Make The Pre Posted: 06 Jun 2009 03:43 PM PDT
So what changed? What had that new-found $325 million bought them? Talent. Lots and lots of talent - from their competitors, no less. With a good amount of lucky timing and some decent salary proposals, Palm managed to snatch up at least 8 people who were just oh-so-damn good at what they do, ending up with the Palm Pre and webOS as a result. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| The Early Google Papers: Rajeev Motwani’s Contributions To Search Posted: 06 Jun 2009 02:26 PM PDT
Larry Page and Sergey Brin have always given Professor Rajeev Motwani significant credit for helping them create what would eventually become Google. Today, as I say my personal goodbye to the man who helped so many people in our community, I’m also spending some time going back and reading some of the early papers that Rajeev co-authored describing how PageRank could become the basis for a new kind of search engine. In a 1998 paper called “What Can You Do With A Web In Your Pocket” Brin, Motwani, Page and Terry Winograd say “…we have developed a global ranking of Web pages called PageRank based on the link structure of the Web that has properties that are useful for search and navigation..we have used PageRank to develop a novel search engine called Google, which also makes heavy use of anchor text.” An even earlier paper in 1998 that the four co-authored called “The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web” went into much more detail on PageRank. “In this paper, we take advantage of the link structure of the Web to produce a global “importance” ranking of every web page. This ranking, called PageRank, helps search engines and users quickly make sense of the vast heterogeneity of the World Wide Web.” Today much of what they wrote appears as little more than common sense. But in 1998 it was a revolutionary way of thinking. AltaVista, the leading search engine at the time, turned down the chance to buy Google for $1 million, saying spam would make PageRank useless. Yahoo also declined to purchase Google, supposedly because they didn’t want to focus on search, which only sent users away from Yahoo.com. So what seems obvious today was considered sort of meh by the leading technologists a decade ago. The papers are embedded below.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Facing A Lawsuit And Complaints From Celebs, Twitter Launches Verified Accounts Posted: 06 Jun 2009 12:31 PM PDT
Twitter has faced harsh criticism from celebrities, including Kanye West, about impersonators creating unauthorized accounts on their behalf. Tony La Russa, the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals Major League Baseball franchise is suing Twitter claiming that someone is pretending to be him on the site. Today, Twitter’s co-founder Biz Stone responded to the lawsuit, adamantly stating that Twitter will not settle with La Russa, calling the lawsuit an “unnecessary waste of judicial resources bordering on frivolous.” Twitter, as it has done with other similar situations, suspended the account in question. But in response to the problem of impersonators of brands and famous people, Twitter is giving us a sneak peak of an experimental feature they call “verified accounts.” Twitter says it will start rolling out the beta of this feature this summer for a small set of public officials, public agencies, famous artists, athletes, and other celebs who run the risk of impersonation. Businesses will not be included in the initial beta testing of the verification seal. As you can see from the image, the account holder’s page will have a “verified account” official seal in its profile box. Impersonation is a problem on the web in general. Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler recently tried to sue a group of anonymous bloggers for pretending to be him, which proved to be futile. Facebook, like Twitter, is another platform where impersonators can create unauthorized pages on behalf of celebs and public figures. Of course some Twitter impersonations can result in amicable situations. During the Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN race to a million followers, it was revealed that CNN didn’t own the CNNbrk Twitter account. CNN ended up taking control of the CNNbrk account, under the agreement that the original account holder, James Cox, would act as a “social media consultant” to the network. While Twitter’s verification seal is still in an experimental phase, it seems like a step in the right direction. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Are Social Network Aggregators The New Cheese? Posted: 06 Jun 2009 10:40 AM PDT Here’s a question that’s been running through my head ever since Michael posted about FriendFeed being in danger of becoming the coolest app no one uses: exactly how many startups out there are trying to be the one social networking service aggregator to rule them all, and how many is enough? It seems like every day startups come up with new applications, be it for desktop, Web and/or mobile phone, that essentially want to be the gateway to our online lives. In reality though, there are not that many people who want - let alone need - continuous access to multiple social networking services, and even if they do, how many people (outside of the tech industry) do you know who are genuinely waiting for a extra third-party that helps them manage all their online personas? Is this a sucker’s game? Is it a battle worth fighting?
Don’t even get me started on the plethora of apps that syndicate FriendFeed feeds alongside Facebook and Twitter to deliver the best-user-experience-known-to-mankind when it comes to updating your social graph on your current status. It’s the ultimate social networking service aggregator update management tool, baby! All these applications appeal to only a fraction of the users of the more popular social services, many of which are still trying to figure out how to turn all that attention into cold hard cash themselves. I’m not necessarily saying that that’s a reason not do get into that business, I’m just saying chances are little that they’re ever going to be able to turn it into something even remotely profitable. I sincerely think we’ve seen enough of these social network aggregators, and while I’m sure one or two will live on, get acquired or turn out to be a successful venture in another way, most are destined for failure like most startups in any other market, especially if they’re as saturated as this one has quickly proven to be. I’ll sure be pointing back to this post when the next contestants in this particular arena find their way to our inboxes. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| On Twitter, Most People Are Sheep: 80 Percent Of Accounts Have Fewer Than 10 Followers Posted: 06 Jun 2009 09:13 AM PDT
Let’s face it, most people are sheep. It is much easier to follow than to lead, and on Twitter it is no different. A full 80 percent of Twitter accounts have fewer than 10 followers, according to an analysis of seven million Twitter accounts provided to TechCrunch by Web security firm Purewire (which operates TweetGrade). What’s more, 30 percent have zero followers. Does this mean nobody is using Twitter? Or that they are using it more as a one-way information consumption service? The fact that an estimated 32 million people around the world visited Twitter.com alone in April certainly indicates that there is something going on there. It just may be that Twitter really isn’t as much about two-way micro-conversations as it is about one-way micro-broadcasting. Indeed, a recent Harvard Business School study suggested that the top 10 percent of Twitter users produce more than 90 percent of all Tweets. Here is how Purewire breaks down activity on Twitter by number of followers, followings, and Tweets: Followers Followings Tweets What stands out from this data is that about a quarter of all accounts are not following anybody, nearly 30 percent have zero followers, and more than a third have not posted a single Tweet. The problem with all of this data, however, is that it includes abandoned accounts (as most likely does the Harvard data as well). Like any popular Web service, millions of people create a Twitter account, try it once, and never come back again. The Purewire data shows that about 40 percent of users have not sent out a Tweet since the day they created their accounts. You can compare this with the 60 percent abandonment rate claimed by Nielsen. But even these may not be the true abandonment rates. Just because you are not Tweeting does not mean you are not listening. After getting rid of the dead accounts and spam accounts (24 percent of accounts follow nobody), what do we have left? All the activity on Twitter is coming from the remaining people who stick around—that 20 percent with more than ten followers and the 32 percent following more than ten people. If you look at active accounts—which Purewire defined as those with at least 10 followers, 10 followings, and 10 tweets—it shows that Twitter is still filled with sheep. Of those active accounts, 63.6 percent follow more people than they have followers (2.8 percent have the same number of followers as followings). But that is what you’d expect. When only 22 percent of accounts have more than 10 Tweets, people who bother to Tweet on a regular basis will attract more followers than people who prefer to sit back and read. Twitter is no different than any other form of participatory media. A small fraction of users produce the overwhelming amount of content, even if it is just 140 characters at a time. Everyone else just drinks from the stream. Baaaa! (Photo credit: Flickr/Stacie Brew ) Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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Founder and former CEO of 
No, we didn’t get a Palm Pre to check out before its launch today — something which is a bit fishy and contributed to a 
Judging from the 
In early June 2007, Palm was teetering on the edge of obscurity. Their flagship Treo product line had gone stale, numbers were down across the board, and rumors of a sale were abound. On June 4th, 2007 it was announced that Elevation Partners had purchased a 25% equity stake of Palm for $325 million. Flash forward to today; just two years later (almost to the day), Palm has launched the Pre, a phone which managed to nab the attention of just about every blog and blog reader out there.
For example: 
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