The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Cisco: By 2013 Video Will Be 90 Percent Of All Consumer IP Traffic And 64 Percent of Mobile
- Fotonauts Emerges From Its Cocoon As Interactive, Web-Based Fotopedia
- comScore Study: Bing Is Off To A Very Good Start
- Nokia To Pre-load Qik On New Handsets
- Irish Startup Reboots Microsoft Software Licensing and Protection Services Unit
- Cc:Betty Raises $1.5 Million For Email Organization Assistant
- Compete: Facebook US Traffic Nearing Google, Yahoo
- YouTube Video Streams Top 1 Billion/Day
- Launch On TechCrunch, Get Bought By Google
- Songkick Aims To Make A Database Of Every Concert Ever — And It’s Well On Its Way
- We’ve Got A Whole Lotta Bing Stickers. Want One?
- How The Different Mobile Data Syncing Services Stack Up
- Things A Venture Capitalist Will Never Say
- Google Employee Countersues ShoeMoney For Defamation
- Apple’s Cool Matrix-Style App Wall
- CrunchGear: Wiimbledon 2009 set for June 27 at Barcade in Brooklyn, NY
- Live From Startonomics Tokyo
- Ex-Vidoop Employees Launch iPhone Development Outsourcing Service Urban Airship
- Why The iPhone 3G S May Be A Sucker’s Bet Right Now
- Web Security Firm Dasient To Launch With $2 Million From Maples, Sclavos, And Benhamou
- Isn’t It Time Your Kid’s School Used A Web-Based Calendar?
- Palm Pre, Who? Recession, What? Meet The $99 iPhone.
- Say Hello To The iPhone 3G S — “S” Is For Speed
- AT&T Fails iPhone Users Once Again
- State Of The iPhone Ecosystem: 40 Million Devices and 50,000 Apps
| Cisco: By 2013 Video Will Be 90 Percent Of All Consumer IP Traffic And 64 Percent of Mobile Posted: 09 Jun 2009 08:14 AM PDT
By 2013, annual global IP traffic will reach two-thirds of a zettabyte, according to a new forecast of IP traffic issued by Cisco today. What is a zettabyte? It is a trillion gigabytes, dummy. (I had to look that up too). And that number represents more than a fivefold increase in IP traffic from today. (See the forecast in the tables below). What is driving this growth is video. Cisco forecasts that 90 percent of consumer IP traffic (which makes up the majority of total IP traffic) will be video in 2013. Cisco also predicts that mobile data traffic will also be overtaken by video, reaching 64 percent of total mobile IP traffic by 2013. Part of this might be wishful thinking on Cisco’s part, which needs broadband usage growth to continue apace in order to sell its networking gear. But part of it is also the fact that these numbers are based on the percentage of bits traveling over those broadband pipes, and it doesn’t take a lot of fat video files to fill those up. Cisco is a big believer in the growth of mobile video, expecting it to grow from 33 petabytes a month in 2008 to 2,184 petabytes (or 2 exabytes) a month in 2013, which represents a 131 percent compound annual growth rate. As impressive as those numbers sound, at that point, mobile data will only make up 4 percent of total IP traffic. (Good thing Apple finally decided to get with the program and add video to its upcoming iPhone 3GS). In the chart below, you can see how big a role Cisco expects video to play in mobile data traffic. Video is the green part of the bar graphs. Standalone data (dark blue) is also expected to grow quickly.
The devices expected to drive this 131 percent annual growth in mobile data are not so much current 3G mobile handsets, but next-gen “3.5G and above” (in green), as well as laptops and other portable computers (in orange). By 2013, I bet it will be pretty hard to tell the difference between those two segments. Until then, Cisco is offering free apps for the iPhone and Blackberry that lets you check your network speed on the go.
Table 1. Global IP Traffic, 2008-2013 Source: Cisco VNI, 2009
Table 1. Mobile Data Traffic 2008-2013 Source: Cisco, 2009
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| Fotonauts Emerges From Its Cocoon As Interactive, Web-Based Fotopedia Posted: 09 Jun 2009 08:00 AM PDT
We’ve been eagerly awaiting the public beta launch of Fotonauts’ encyclopedia for photos, Fotopedia. TechCrunch Editor Erick Schonfeld reviewed the preview of Fotopedia that was released a few weeks ago. A startup that debuted at TechCrunch50 last year, Fotonauts turns your photo albums into collaborative Web pages about different topics and subjects. Fotonauts, which was in private beta and will officially be known now as Fotopedia, is a desktop photo client which helps you tag, organize, and share your photos in a live feed. The brainchild of Jean-Marie Hullot, former CTO of NeXT Software and Apple's Application Division, Fotopedia was born when Hullot was helping his children with reports for school. He was using Wikipedia for background information but couldn’t find a comprehensive site that provided relevant photos to Wikipedia entries. Thus the idea for Fotonauts was born and entered private beta last year. But Hullot and his business partner, Gilles Samoun, wanted to create a web-facing product, which will serve as a complete photo encyclopedia, alongside the desktop client that focused more on the encyclopedia part of the concept. Fotopedia is supposed to be a cross between Flickr and Wikipedia, serving as an archive of "images for humanity.” The beta launch of Fotopedia lets you to turn any photo album from your Fotopedia desktop client into a Web page entry on Fotopedia, complete with tags, associated Wikipedia entry, and Google Map information where available. You can also add relevant photos from other Fotopedia albums and from photos licensed under creative commons on Flickr. And you can post your album on Twitter, Flickr and Facebook. Web albums can also be built collaboratively. Photographers can add photos and other data on specific places and topics, all tagged and organized by Fotonauts. And as in the private beta version, the photos in Fotonauts are synchronized with existing photo services like Flickr and Picasa. A new feature that was added lets you choose if you want your album be presented for consideration for the Fotopedia photo encyclopedia, under the corresponding index or title which you file it under. So if you create an album from a trip to Bali, you can be a contributor by submitting the entire album or certain photographs to be considered for the Fotopedia entry on the encyclopedia entry for Bali. On the Fotopedia web site, anyone can access albums for a variety of topics, places, people and more. There are over 150,000 high-quality photos already, organized into 4,501 "articles." Each article is a Web slide show, along with the associated Wikipedia entry and Google Map. Each photo contains a good amount of metadata making it search-engine friendly. The encyclopedia tab on the site lets you access a indexed archive of photo albums on topics like geography, history, art and more.  It’s important to note that in order to be a contributor to an encyclopedia entry, you need to have downloaded the desktop client. But users who don’t have the Fotopedia desktop client can also use the “community” tab on the site, to view albums, vote for photos to be included in encyclopedia entries, comment, and follow users, pages or albums. A photo officially enters the photo encyclopedia by reaching 5 positive votes. Users are allowed 50 votes every day to decide which photos make it and which ones don’t. Users can also create widgets of albums to embed on on blogs, web sites and social networks. Users can pick single photos or complete albums to add to a widget. Here’s an example of an embedded widget for the Bali entry: Below are two screenshots, first of the desktop client, and second of the Website. Both are very similar, except the desktop client has more features, including a photo stream on the right-hand columns of all the people and albums you are following.
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| comScore Study: Bing Is Off To A Very Good Start Posted: 09 Jun 2009 07:56 AM PDT
The study confirms earlier reports that Bing had a very good start, even overtaking Yahoo as the No. 2 search engine at some point according to web analytics firm StatCounter (although that apparently lasted only a day). According to comScore, Microsoft Sites increased its average daily penetration among searchers in the United Stated from 13.8% during the period of May 26-30 to 15.5% during the period of June 2-6, 2009, an indication that the search engine is reaching more people than before. Microsoft's share of search engine results pages (SERPs) in the U.S., increased from 9.1% to 11.1% during the same time frame.
Like many people, I’m trying out Bing for a month or so to see how well it stacks up against other search engines (primarily compared to Google, which has been my default search engine for many years). So far, I find the experience generally very pleasing and the search results to live up to the hype. It remains to be seen if I, and the many others out there who are taking Bing for a test-drive following the launch buzz, keep on using it when the momentum fades away. But boy is it good to have some real competition in search going, even if just for a short while. To be continued. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Nokia To Pre-load Qik On New Handsets Posted: 09 Jun 2009 07:41 AM PDT
With all of the collaboration going on between Qik and Nokia over the past few months, it seemed like it wouldn’t be too long before Nokia went ahead and put the live mobile video broadcasting service onto handsets right out of the box. Sure, enough: Beginning with this morning’s release of the North American N97, Qik will come preloaded onto all Nokia S60-based phones. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Irish Startup Reboots Microsoft Software Licensing and Protection Services Unit Posted: 09 Jun 2009 07:10 AM PDT
At the end of September 2008, Microsoft stopped accepting new SLPS customers, which we got confirmation of when we researched and reported the quiet shut-down. SLP Services was a software licensing suite that provides developers with the ability to protect code, license software, create license versions, and track performance and profitability of products created with .NET. For more information, you can watch this non-embeddable video. InishTech, founded through collaboration between Microsoft IP Ventures, Enterprise Ireland and local entrepreneurs Aidan Gallagher, John O’Sullivan and David Smyth, will now take on responsibility for SLP Services’ existing customer base and will “continue to provide, expand and grow the service to independent software vendors (ISVs) and developers around the world”. Microsoft will license its IP to InishTech and maintain a minority interest in the startup. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Cc:Betty Raises $1.5 Million For Email Organization Assistant Posted: 09 Jun 2009 07:10 AM PDT
Cc:Betty, a free service that helps organize group email threads, today has secured $1.5 million in seed led by Venrock with investors Seraph Group and Hillsven participating. The company was incubated in Venrock’s offices and officially launched at DEMO in March. Founded in 2008 by Michael Cerda, Cc:Betty is a service that routes, parses, and organizes email conversations in a simple at-a-glance dashboard so you never have to scour your inbox to find the bits and pieces of a long thread. If you cc “betty@ccbetty.com” on any email, "she" will create a mailspace, which is a webpage, for your entire email thread and will divide important things such as dates, times, people, places, and files and will format them all in one place. Cc:Betty will track messages with up to 100 recipients and can organize emails with up to 20 MB in size, including attachments. Recently, Cc:Betty upgraded its service with several new features, including the ability to see maps, images and documents as large thumbnails in email threads, and a list of people in an email conversation. You can also filter content of the thread by participant.  Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Compete: Facebook US Traffic Nearing Google, Yahoo Posted: 09 Jun 2009 03:54 AM PDT
While it is interesting to see how the hot social networks stack up in terms of traffic, I thought I’d also take a look at how well Facebook is doing compared to other Web giants like Google.com, Yahoo.com and MSN.com. To my surprise, Facebook appears to have become a real challenger to these Internet juggernauts, who are relatively old compared to the social network that started out in 2004 as a university student-only service and only really opened up to the public in September 2006.
Evidently. this is only one way to look at things. First, Compete does not always provide spot-on traffic estimates (data from comScore suggested Facebook had yet to surpass MySpace in US traffic back in March) and second it’s hardly fair to compare these websites as they all serve different purposes and audiences. But the picture painted here is that Facebook has unmistakingly grown up to become one of the most popular Internet destinations on the planet, both in terms of registered users (well beyond 200 million at this point) and in terms of received traffic. And we’re still talking about a privately-held (albeit massively funded) company that has come this far. No wonder its valuation is surging. Then there’s our model of the true value of social networks, which gave Facebook a clear lead as well. For comparison, Compete pegs Google to have received a total of 145.5 million unique visitors in May, ahead of Yahoo (135.5 million) and MSN.com (97.5 million), which means Facebook has already overtaken the MSN website and is nearing the former two. It’s important to note that all four sites show a significant increase in U.S. traffic since the beginning of this year, but Facebook is definitely on the steepest growth curve here. In January 2009, total traffic to Facebook was somewhere around 68.5 million uniques, which means the May number of 113 million represents a 61% jump, mostly thanks to the successful spread of the Facebook Connect service. If these trends persist, expect Facebook to come out on top of the Compete charts well before the year ends. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| YouTube Video Streams Top 1 Billion/Day Posted: 09 Jun 2009 01:36 AM PDT
It’s hard to compare apples to apples, though. Recent Comscore data says Google/YouTube streams just under 7 billion videos per month in the U.S., up from around 5 billion/month late last year. That’s about 225 million streams a day, which still puts them well above all the next major competitors (MySpace, Hulu, Yahoo, Viacom, Microsoft, etc.). Nielsen says Google/YouTube streams 5.5 billion videos/month in the U.S. But the real number of streams/day, we’ve now confirmed from Google, is above 1 billion/day worldwide. That matches what we’ve heard from other sources. That pretty much means everyone on the Internet, on average, is watching one YouTube video per day. Google hasn’t commented on this in the past, and we can’t figure out exactly why. It may have to do with ongoing litigation and the desire to keep exact numbers quiet. Or it may be that they don’t necessarily want analysts to have deep insight into YouTube’s true cost structure. We’ve spoken to Comscore about this casually in the past, and they’ve noted that their estimates are based on available data, and that data doesn’t involve direct access to YouTube servers. Some companies choose to give Comscore deep access, others don’t. The data quality suffers accordingly. But one thing is clear. Comscore thinks the total online video space is around 17 billion monthly streams in the U.S. We now know that YouTube alone serves that many video streams every fifteen days or so worldwide. Time to revise those numbers up - if YouTube has 40% of the online market share for video like Comscore says (it may actually be much higher market share, another reason Google may not want this data out there), that means the total number of video streams on the Internet is approaching 80 billion/month, a heady number. We’ve approached MySpace and Hulu, the no. 2 and no. 3 online video services, for their exact streaming numbers. So far, no response.
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| Launch On TechCrunch, Get Bought By Google Posted: 09 Jun 2009 01:35 AM PDT
The company got a lot of attention as one of the first Ajax-powered “online Word” products. An acquisition by Google came just a few months later, and Writely formed the foundation for what is now Google Docs. Cofounder Sam Schillace is now an engineering director at Google. He was profiled by the Wall Street Journal today: “Serial entrepreneur Sam Schillace had been writing software professionally for 16 years when one of his ideas caught Google Inc.’s attention. Within seven months, Mr. Schillace had sold his online word-processing program to the search-engine giant, where it spawned Google Docs. Now, he oversees engineering for Google products including Gmail, Picasa and Reader. Mr. Schillace spoke with reporter Elizabeth Garone; edited excerpts follow.” He also says in the interview: “TechCrunch [then a tech-review Web site, now a network of tech sites] and then Google found us as we were testing Writely live. We were almost immediately in the middle of a press and investor/acquirer storm.” Of course Writely would have done well and been acquired anyway. But we love that he remembers the small part we played in launching the service. If you’ve got an awesome idea baking, make sure we hear about it first. And the timing for TechCrunch50, coming up in September, may just be perfect for you. We want to put you in the middle of a “press and investor/acquirer storm,” too. And for people who are thinking of starting a company of their own, Sam has some advice for you: “Never start a company just to start it. You start a company because you have an idea that you think will be great for some customer — and great ideas are always worth doing, even in a tough market. It’s also the case that many big companies are started during downturns and benefit from the added focus and discipline that’s necessary. So it might actually be the best time to start a company, if it’s the right idea and it’s done well.” Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Songkick Aims To Make A Database Of Every Concert Ever — And It’s Well On Its Way Posted: 08 Jun 2009 11:57 PM PDT
To be clear, Songkick is still very much focusing on concert recommendation, but its site is now much deeper than that. Beginning today, you will be able to enter in the name of a band and a city in which you’ve seen a show you’ve seen in the past, and Songkick will scan its databases for that show. If it’s there — and there’s a pretty good chance it is, given that the site already has 1 million concerts in its database — you can click on the “I was there” button, and it will be added to your Songkick profile. Each of these concerts has its own Songkick profile page, that acts as a wiki of sorts. Any user can add photos from that show, ticket stubs, set lists, write a review of the show and a host of other things. And if a show isn’t there, you can add it. That’s a key part to all of this: Songkick wants to have every concert ever performed in its database, and it’s going to need its users to help make that possible. It’s done a huge chunk of the work with a million shows going back to a Bob Dylan show at the home of Karen Wallace in May 1960, but there is more to be done. The overall idea is to extend the experience of going to a concert beyond the actual show. And to make it more social. Maybe you’ll see that you’ve been to a bunch of the same shows as someone else, and you’ll add them as a friend on Songkick, and you’ll probably run into them in another show. More importantly for the social aspect on the site, Songkick now allows you to track not only bands and venues, but people as well. So if you find someone with similar tastes in music or a friend, you can be alerted when they say they’re going to go to a show. It might also be interesting to track people of influence like music journalists or executives using the site, Songkick co-founder Ian Hogarth tells us.
Obviously, as is the case with any social site these days, Songkick information can be sent out to Twitter and Facebook. And while Songkick doesn’t yet integrate with something like Facebook Connect to port your social graph over, Hogarth envisions something like that happening in short order. Though he warns that you probably won’t want to track everyone you’re friends with on Facebook because Songkick is also about personal music preferences — which is a nice way of saying that a lot of your friends probably have crap music tastes. This is something I know to be true. Still, the giant concert database is the most interesting element of this update. Hogarth at one point explained it as being like the IMDb (Internet Movie Database) for concerts, but didn’t want to limit it as just that because the service really offers so much more in terms of recommendations and social elements. Still, that’s a pretty good way to describe it as I’m finding myself using the database in a similar way. You know when you look up a movie on the IMDb and then you click on an actor to see what else they’re in, then you click on that movie? The same type of rabbit hole exists on Songkick when you start looking up concerts. In terms of monetization, the company has some interesting ideas. Right now, the company uses the affiliate model for tickets to upcoming shows it sells through its site. But with this new database, there are some other options including obviously placing advertising on the site, which should happen soon, Hogarth notes. Another more interesting idea is to create a way to sell merchandise from past concerts you were at, or just went to. Imagine being able to buy a recording from last night’s show, for example. Or maybe a t-shirt at a slightly discounted price because no one would buy them for $40. That could be pretty cool. Songkick was a Y Combinator company and raised an Angel round of funding back in March of 2008 and a Series A in December. The company has 14 people now working for it.
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| We’ve Got A Whole Lotta Bing Stickers. Want One? Posted: 08 Jun 2009 10:47 PM PDT
Microsoft was kind enough to send us a few boxes of Bing stickers (we requested them). We don’t have enough surface area on our laptops, walls, floors, dogs, etc. to use them all, so if you want a couple, they’re all yours. Just send us a self addressed stamped envelope and we’ll put a few in the mail back to you. Send those envelopes to TechCrunch, PO Box 638, Menlo Park, CA 94026. If you want, send us one of your startup stickers to that address, to. We’ll force the interns to put them on their laptops and stand in front of the CrunchCam with it. Here’s one on the back of the last generation CrunchPad prototype:
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| How The Different Mobile Data Syncing Services Stack Up Posted: 08 Jun 2009 10:06 PM PDT
As the phones in our pockets become our second computers, it will become increasingly important to sync data between the two. Not just emails, but contacts, calendars, photos, music, apps, browser bookmarks, files, and more. Nearly every Web phone out there comes with at least some sort of rudimentary syncing app. Apple has MobileMe, Nokia has Ovi, Palm has Synergy, Blackberry has Internet Services, and Microsoft has My Phone. An open-source competitor to all of these is Funambol. The startup evaluated all of the syncing services and scored them based on criteria such as how many kinds of data each one supports, cost, usability, and number of supported devices. (Full study embedded at bottom of post). It came up with a score for each out of a maximum of 40. Naturally enough, Funambol scored the highest, but if you throw that out you end up with the list below (with accompanying scores). Nokia Ovi – 28 As you can see, Nokia’s Ovi edged out Apple’s MobileMe, but that was because it offers a free version, supports more phones (although, they are all Nokia), and can sync photos with Flickr. Despite MobileMe’s early hiccups, Apple seems to have fixed the problems. MobileMe supports a lot of different data types (email, photos, contacts, calendar) and gets high marks for usability. Palm, Microsoft, and Vodafone’s Zyb all tie for third place. And Blackberry has a poor showing in fifth place after Google Sync. Blackberry’s service is the most expensive at $20 a month,and it only syncs e-mail. MobileMe is about half that price, but still not cheap enough. Nearly three quaters of the syncing apps are free.
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| Things A Venture Capitalist Will Never Say Posted: 08 Jun 2009 10:03 PM PDT VC Non Admissions View more Microsoft Word documents from vcobserver. It’s just so darn true. The “competence” slide with the guy scratching his head is my favorite. I’m pretty sure it’s a clown that’s presenting to them. Thanks for the tip Kelly.
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| Google Employee Countersues ShoeMoney For Defamation Posted: 08 Jun 2009 06:58 PM PDT
Today, Farrell is going one step further by counter-suing Schoemaker, seeking damages for “defamation of Farrell’s reputation and tortious interference.” We’ve embedded the full document below. Portions of Farrell’s accusations and defense come from articles reported by Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land. In one of his early articles on the case, Sullivan quoted Schoemaker calling Farrell a “corrupt employee”, which has allegedly led to “public scorn and ridicule as a result of Schoemaker’s public comments”. One of Sullivan’s follow-up posts is also being used to demonstrate Farrell’s innocence. In the post, which is titled “Google Finds No Data Misuse In Shoemoney Trademark Case”, Sullivan wrote that Google blamed the AdWords violation on human error on the part of an employee other than Farrell. Google included the following response (which is also being used as supporting evidence in the defamation case):
However, in a post covering today’s news, Sullivan writes that Google has not explictly cleared Farrell, but rather that it has found that none of its policies had been overtly bypassed:
The fact that Google didn’t want to directly clear Farrell is strange — given that apparently none of its policies have been circumvented, why not just clear him entirely? In effect, the company has left some wiggle room for Farrell to have behaved wrongly without abusing his position as a Google employee, though he may not have done so. We’ll continue to follow the cases as they develop. Schoemaker has provided us with the following response:
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| Apple’s Cool Matrix-Style App Wall Posted: 08 Jun 2009 05:59 PM PDT
Today at Apple’s WWDC event in San Francisco, Apple had a bunch of Cinema Display monitors mounted together on a wall showing what looked to be some sort of pulsating canvas. But a closer look revealed that it was actually a huge collection of icons for many of the apps available in the App Store, arranged by color. Apparently, when someone purchased one, that app’s icon would pulsate, creating the effect. While it wasn’t quite real-time, nor was it entirely representative of all the more than 50,000 apps in the App Store, the visualization was pretty damn cool. Prettier than the Google Holodeck and it gave off less heat. Not surprisingly, onlookers were mesmerized by the pulsating apps. Check out the pictures below and watch the video. It reminded me a bit of the lines of code falling down that the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar would see when trying to look into the The Matrix — only with fart apps.
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| CrunchGear: Wiimbledon 2009 set for June 27 at Barcade in Brooklyn, NY Posted: 08 Jun 2009 05:33 PM PDT  Were visits to the doctor ever a pleasant experience as a kid? Of course not! Even regular checkups were a hassle and a nightmare, but those lollipops and model airplanes were totally worth it in the end. But my experiences differed greatly from the kids who were stuck in hospitals with life threatening illnesses and the like. It sucks being sick and stuck in a hospital with nothing to look at other than those sterile white walls, right? That's exactly why we're getting involved with Wiimbledon this year and donating proceeds to Penny Arcade's Child's Play Charity. What Steve Bryant and Lane Buschel started two years ago in Brooklyn has now become something more than just a Wii tennis tournament. I went last year and had an incredibly fun time watching folks in all manner of costume playing a little Wii, drinking a lot of beer and having a generally fun time. But we're changing that around a little bit this year to include a fundraiser that will hopefully raise the single largest sum of money for Child's Play ever.
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| Posted: 08 Jun 2009 05:33 PM PDT After attending a great Tokyo 2.0 event last night (more to come about that later), the GeeksOnAPlane group is now at Startonomics Tokyo, where we’ll be hearing about a broad range of topics pertaining to Japanese tech throughout the day. Join us below as we watch the presentations. Slides from today’s presentations: Shuji Utsumi, CEO Q Entertainment; Gaming in JapanJapanese Game Business Overview (Shuji Utsumi, Startonomics Tokyo, June 2009) View more OpenOffice presentations from GeeksOnaPlane. Gen Miyazawa, CEO Cirius Technologies; Mobile in JapanJapanese Mobile Market Overview View more Microsoft Word documents from Geeks on a Plane. Overview of US Platforms & Social Networking with Dave McClure, Bradley Horowitz and Doug GouldOverview of US Platforms & Social Networking (Startonomics Tokyo, June 2009) View more OpenOffice presentations from Dave Mcclure. US Startup Investment Markets Overview with Dave McClure, Joyce Kim, David Troy, and Ryan PipkinUS Investment Markets (Startonomics Tokyo, June 2009) View more OpenOffice presentations from Dave Mcclure. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Ex-Vidoop Employees Launch iPhone Development Outsourcing Service Urban Airship Posted: 08 Jun 2009 05:23 PM PDT
I spoke today with Scott Kveton, a former developer with deadpooled open-ID startup Vidoop, about the startup, Urban Airship, he and 3 other fellow ex-Vidoopers launched today to assist iPhone developers with push notifications and iPhone storekit provisioning (you can find a comprehensive story about the fall of Vidoop here). iPhone app developers can outsource these cloud-based services to Urban Airship, which will focus primarily on the iPhone for now but will aim to provide support for other mobile devices in the future. Kveton says that he along with his former colleagues saw a gap in the industry where developers could get bogged down in the nitty gritty development issues concerning push notifications to the iPhone and updating content to apps. The service will handle the delivery of notifications to Apple, will provide aliases for your users so you can send specific messages to users, and will create a web interface to send targeted or broadcast messaging for updates or other information. Urban Airship’s iPhone StoreKit Provisioning service will host content for in-app transactions and content updating, will keep an application’s download size small by offloading content to their servers, will provide updates to an app’s users when the developer changes content, will create a catalog of content that can be updating at anytime, and can be integrated with the startup’s push service to alert users when an app’s catalog changes. Urban Airship’s first client, Subatomic Studios, which developed the Fieldrunners app, is using Urban Airship to help update and deploy new maps to its app, so users can enjoy additional map interfaces once they’ve exhausted existing levels. Kveton says that they are targeting the iPhone market because its the most mature at the moment. But as developers add more apps to the Palm Pre, Blackberry and Andoid, Urban Airship hopes to provide services for these devices down the line. Urban Airship is still formatting its pricing model and provides technology that is only compatible with Apple’s updated iPhone 3.0 OS, which was announced today and will be rolled out to the public next week. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Why The iPhone 3G S May Be A Sucker’s Bet Right Now Posted: 08 Jun 2009 03:24 PM PDT
While current iPhone owners last year got to upgrade to the iPhone 3G for the fully subsidized $199 and $299 prices, the same will not be true this year. Instead, current iPhone 3G owners only 1 year into their 2 year contracts, will have to pay $399 and $499 to upgrade. The reason for this is simple: AT&T subsidizes the phone down to $199 based on a 2-year payment agreement with the customer. If you only paid one year of that contract, AT&T would have to eat those costs. So instead it’s putting that cost back into this new phone. It didn’t do that last year, because the original iPhone wasn’t subsidized. It makes sense, but here’s why that’s a bad idea. There are no shortage of AT&T iPhone customers who are pissed off at the company. Not only is their service sketchy at best in many places (I have spotty service in San Francisco, but it was much worse when I was in NYC this past week), but they do things like delay the roll out of features that the rest of the world is getting because they have other providers. And they do things like block the Sling player app from streaming over 3G on just the iPhone, while it works fine on other phones. And they rip us off with text messages (as do other carriers, though AT&T was particularly bad when moving from the original iPhone to the iPhone 3G). The list goes on. Why this matters is that the dislike of AT&T, mixed with a not huge update to the iPhone and a higher subsidized price could be a perfect storm for users that normally would upgrade, not to. I probably will because the iPhone is integral to my work and I could use more speed and power, but the fact that I’m questioning it should say something. I didn’t question it for a second last year. But here’s why it’s really a very questionable upgrade: Because Apple is at some point going to move the iPhone beyond the AT&T network. That move could happen as soon as next year. If you buy this iPhone 3G S now, you’ll be locked in for two more years (or have to pay the large cancellation fee). Now, AT&T is trying to negotiate with Apple to extend its exclusive deal through 2011, in which case the move to the iPhone 3G S would make some sense. But that has not happened yet, and AT&T is playing in risky waters. If I learned tomorrow that AT&T and Apple were ending their exclusive deal in 2010, there is no way I would upgrade. I’d suck it up and wait for a year. That’s why it may have been smart for AT&T to extend an olive branch to current iPhone users and give them the same subsidized price as new users. Sure, they would have taken a hit, probably a fairly big one, but big picture, I don’t think it would be all that bad. First of all, not all current owners would upgrade even at the lower price. Second, if you think about it, it’s not really that big of a hit for them. It’s really only $200 per customer — AT&T makes that off of me in two months with my bill. And if they do lose the Apple exclusivity, they will effectively be losing $1,200 (one year’s worth of bills) that I otherwise would have been paying them. Instead, basically what it will sounds like to most current iPhone owners is AT&T saying that, “we love you as a customer so much that we’re going to make you pay an extra $200 for this new device since you stuck around with us.” That $399 to $499 for the iPhone 3G S could end up costing you a lot more if Apple moves the iPhone beyond AT&T. And that sucks, because I want it. But I’m very worried it won’t be worth it. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Web Security Firm Dasient To Launch With $2 Million From Maples, Sclavos, And Benhamou Posted: 08 Jun 2009 03:23 PM PDT
As more and more applications move to the Web, computer security is increasingly threatened by security holes in Web applications, denial of service attacks on business Websites, and phishing expeditions that spread through social networks. If Twitter can be hacked, so can your company’s Website. A startup called Dasient is preparing to address the new class of security issues arising from Web applications with a suite of tools to track and close off such vulnerabilities. It will officially launch next week. The company will target both Website owners and ISPs as potential customers. Attacks on Websites and Web applications can spread faster than traditional desktop viruses, but they can also be detected faster. A Web-scale approach will be the key to keeping one step ahead of the bad guys. Dasient’s founders are Neil Daswani, formerly a Web security engineer and product manager at Google, Ameet Ranadive (ex-McKinsey), Googler Shariq Rizvi (another Google alum). They raised $2 million last fall in a seed round from investors Mike Maples, ex-Verisign CEO Stratton Sclavos, and ex-3Com/Palm chairman Eric Benhamou. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Isn’t It Time Your Kid’s School Used A Web-Based Calendar? Posted: 08 Jun 2009 03:00 PM PDT
It can be a struggle for parents to juggle their kids’ school events, games and conferences and it’s becoming increasingly common for parents to use web services to manage family calendars. But schools still remain stubbornly disconnected from parents online. While more and more schools are turning to the web as a platform, less than 5% of schools, both public and private, are offering parents internet school calendars. School Calenders Now, an initiative devoted to helping schools share their internet calendars with parents, is a partnership between Intand, which helps schools manage their calenders online, and Cozi, an online family calendar, scheduling service and social network. The initiative is billed as a way to help schools find a budget-friendly and easy way to make Internet school calendars available to parents. We previously reviewed Cozi here. Through Intand, schools can publish their basic annual Internet school calendar at no cost. These calendars can also be synced up to calendar and scheduling programs used by consumers, including the Cozi’s Family Calendar, Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, and Apple’s iCal, giving parents automatic access to updates in a school’s calendar when schedules change. School Calendars Now is embarking on a marketing campaign to let parents vote (on their site) to have their school's official Internet calendar made available and can also notify other parents via e-mail to participate. School Calendars Now will tally the votes for each school and make requests to schools on behalf of all parents. The initiative seems like a good way to encourage schools to connect more efficiently with parents via technology (and to address an under-served market for Cozi and Intand). Other competitors to Cozi include CalendarFly and MyFamily.com. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| Palm Pre, Who? Recession, What? Meet The $99 iPhone. Posted: 08 Jun 2009 12:00 PM PDT
This new iPhone will be the iPhone 3G. While the newly released iPhone 3G S will offer more storage, and presumably a faster processor, more RAM and faster download speeds, this iPhone will have the same specs as the last one. But what you get for this is one hell of a price: $99. This undercuts the price of the current iPhone models by $100 and more importantly, also undercuts the cost of the Palm Pre by that amount (and even more without the Pre’s $100 mail-in rebate). $99 is a very nice sweet spot for a device that remember, will also have a access to the App Store’s over 50,000 apps. This $99 iPhone will be on sale starting today. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Say Hello To The iPhone 3G S — “S” Is For Speed Posted: 08 Jun 2009 11:44 AM PDT
Today, during its WWDC keynote address, Apple has unveiled the new iPhone 3G S, the successor to the iPhone 3G that was unveiled one year ago. Available in the U.S. on June 19, the new iPhone is giving people a lot of what they’ve been asking for in the past — and some stuff that Apple undoubtedly hopes will make buyers forget all about the Palm Pre. First of all, the new iPhone is significantly faster than the current model. That’s what the “S” really stands for, “Speed.” Most applications will run at least 2 times faster, according to Apple. Specifics weren’t given about the processor in the device and the RAM included, but you can bet it’s about double the RAM and a processor that has been bumped significantly something which we talked about at length recently. Also not noted is if the device will have a chip to use the faster 3G network that AT&T is supposedly rolling out, but you can bet that’s in the cards as well. The other improvements in this new iPhone are what were expected. It will have a nicer 3 megapixel camera, that can finally do auto-focus. I’ve been testing out a similar camera on the Google Ion phone for a few weeks now, and it’s not even funny how much better it is than the current iPhone’s. And yes, as rumored, this iPhone will offer the ability to shoot video — something which Apple prevented on the iPhone 3G, although it was possible with unapproved apps. Another new feature is voice control. Not only can now make calls simply by talking to the phone but you can also control the playback on the iPhone with your voice. If you say “play a song by the Killers,” it will work. You can also ask the phone, “what is playing now?” And it will say it. And you can also say “play more songs like this,” and iTunes Genius will activate. This looks awesome.
One of the most important improvements to this new iPhone however is that the battery life has improved. Apple claims that the iPhone 3G S will get 9 hours of web surfing now when on WiFi — that’s up from 6 hours on the current iPhone. 3G talk time will be the same 5 hours now though. The iPhone 3G S will come in two sizes, each with two colors: White or Black. The low-end 16 GB version will run you $199. The high-end 32 GB version will be $299. While the price points are the same as last year, the storage sizes have doubled. One thing that everyone seemed to agree on following its launch this weekend, is that the Palm Pre had an experience that was overall faster than the iPhone’s. With this new processor, more RAM and faster download speeds, that is likely to shift in favor of the iPhone once again. I still think the iPhone 3G S name is rather silly, and could be downright confusing for those who think people are talking about the iPhone 3G in plural. But whatever, it’s faster, slightly prettier and with a better battery, so I’m happy. As I noted above, the iPhone 3G S will be available in the U.S. on June 19, and will be available in much of the rest of the world on July 7. Update: But is buying one a sucker’s bet right now?
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| AT&T Fails iPhone Users Once Again Posted: 08 Jun 2009 11:42 AM PDT
At launch on June 17th, MMS is going to be supported by 29 carriers, and tethering will be supported by 22 of them. So when can we finally expect these stateside? MMS is apparently coming “later this summer”. And tethering? A much more nebulous (and ominous) “later”. This is ridiculous, plain and simple. AT&T has almost certainly known about Apple’s plans for many months if not years, and was probably involved in determining when these features would be launching in the first place. AT&T has made it clear many times that it simply doesn’t have the bandwidth to support the millions of new iPhone users that are using their “unlimited” data plans far more than they would on other phones. It’s arbitrarily preventing data hungry applications from being deployed to the app store. It’s quickly becoming clear that AT&T is holding the iPhone back. Unfortunately, AT&T still has the lock on the iPhone and you can be sure the network is doing everything it can to keep a firm grasp on its cash cow, like giving Apple a nice chunk of money for every iPhone sold. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| State Of The iPhone Ecosystem: 40 Million Devices and 50,000 Apps Posted: 08 Jun 2009 10:51 AM PDT
Apple has just announced yet another milestone for its popular App Store: 50,000 applications are now available in the store. The announcement was made at the WWDC event in San Francisco, alongside the news that Apple has sold some 40 million iPhones and iPod touches. This follows Apple hitting its 1 billionth app download in April, and 35,000 apps later that month. The platform shows no sign of slowing down and that’s bad news for rivals, including the new Palm Pre, which launched on Saturday with about 49,981 fewer apps. Apple went on to show off some of the iPhone 3.0 features — there are over 100 new ones, and over 1,000 new APIs. Unfortunately, it looks like MMS support in the U.S. won’t be available until later this summer — an AT&T hold up, apparently. As we already heard previously, cut, copy and paste will be in 3.0 — something desired by many users for a long time. Apple also unveiled a way to rent and purchase movies right from your iPhone through iTunes on the device over the air. You can also buy TV Shows, music video and audiobooks. There is also now iTunes U support on the iPhone. It looks like Apple has finally figured out the tricky parental limitation issue, as this is now built-in to the iPhone. This works not only with movies and TV shows, but more importantly with apps. This should resolve some of those silly application rejections in the App Store now. Tethering will now work with both Macs and PCs. It works wired through USB or over Bluetooth, Apple calls it “seamless,” indicating that it is super easy to set up. It will be rolling out “later.” Which drew jeers from the crowd. JavaScript will be 3 times faster in the new version of Safari for the iPhone. And it will support HTML 5 — a new standard that Google highlighted the importance of during its Google I/O conference two weeks ago. The new “Find My iPhone” feature drew cheers. If you lose your iPhone anywhere and have a MobileMe account, you can find exactly where your iPhone is on a map on the web. You can also ping your iPhone remotely, which puts out an alert noise to show where it is. And if it is really stolen, you can now send a remote wipe command, to delete everything on the phone. A nice feature. Demos of a health application in which you can remotely monitor someone’s vital signs, in-app purchases through a bookstore app and TomTom turn-by-turn navigation all drew cheers as well. A new ZipCar application is pretty cool. You can make the horn honk and unlock your borrowed car right from the iPhone app. iPhone 3.0 will be available June 17. Developers get the gold master today.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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Alongside its unveiling of the new iPhone today at the WWDC keynote in San Francisco, Apple also unveiled a secret weapon in its quest to dominate the smartphone market: A cheaper iPhone.
MMS and Tethering — two features that have been readily available on many smartphones for years — are 
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