The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Japan’s 32 Best iPhone Apps (All Available In English)
- Is This The Real Answer To Google’s ‘Unexplained Phenomenon’ Puzzle?
- Microsoft’s ‘Ten Grand’ Competition Ends, Was Actually Pretty Clever
- As Other Real-Time Search Engines Fizzle, OneRiot Gets Some Early Traction
- WITN?: Brazil nuts, American idiots and whoever else I have to upset around here to keep my job
- Maps Wars: How Google, Microsoft And Yahoo Deal With Bridge Closure
| Japan’s 32 Best iPhone Apps (All Available In English) Posted: 06 Sep 2009 06:13 AM PDT
The local developer community has noticed and produced a slew of apps aimed at a global audience. What follows is my subjective selection of the “best” of these made-in-Japan apps, all of which are at least available in English. (I left out iPhone games released by big companies such as Capcom, Konami, Sega or Namco to focus on apps created by startups or individuals based in Japan instead.) My personal favorite is a free (and fantastic) GPS-based photo sharing app called Memory Tree (just like all the apps in the following list, it works worldwide). But here’s a round-up of all the 32 apps I chose, grouped in six categories (games, productivity, tools, photography and art, music, and everything else). Category: Games 1. Gang Street Wars by DigiDock (iTunes links: $1.99 for a limited time / free version) 2. Broadway Cafe by Artscape and Istpika ($4.99) 3. Glandarius Wing Strike by IZUMOGASIN ($4.99 / free version) 4. Samurai Chess by Conit ($2.99 / free version) 5. iYamato by Geppetto ($0.99 / free version) 6. LightBike by Pankaku ($2.99 / free version) 7. Vay by SoMoGa ($4.99) 8. newtonica by Field System ($ 4.99) 9. newtonica2 by Field System ($ 0.99/ free version) 10. iNinja by Geppetto ($1.99 / free version) 11. ExZeus by Hyper Devbox ($0.99) Category: Productivity 13. ZeptoPad 3.0 by Ubiquitous Entertainment ($19.99) 14. gottaDo2 by Istpika ($2.99) 15. PokéDia by s21g ($2.99) Category: Tools 17. ServersMan by FreeBit (free) Category: Photography and Art 19. Memory Tree by XeNN (free) If you click the “Same Time” button, you can catch and view countless photos the users of the app took around the globe in the last hours (regardless of your location), thereby creating common photographic memories worldwide. This is just very cool.
20. Koredoko (free) 21. TiltShift Generator by Takayuki Fukatsu ($0.99 for a limited time) 22. Art Remix by Appliya Studio (free) 23. Ukiyo-e Beauties by Appliya ($3.99) Category: Music 25. Rekords by Delaware ($1.99) 26. PocketGuitar by Shinya Kasatani ($0.99) 27. iShakuhachi by GClue ($0.99) Category: Everything else 29. Bijin Tokei by PHIRIA ($2.99) 30. Wikiamo by Satoshi Nakagawa (free) 31. NatsuLion by Takuma Mori (free) 32. Amamiya Momo by Xtone ($2.99) Nota Bene: And why some of the apps have been available in the US App Store for months but never made their way to other countries (i.e the German store where I mostly buy from) is totally beyond me, too. Special thanks to Nobuyuki Hayashi for his contribution to this article. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Is This The Real Answer To Google’s ‘Unexplained Phenomenon’ Puzzle? Posted: 06 Sep 2009 04:16 AM PDT
The Telegraph thought it had solved the mystery, but Andrew Healey begged to differ and offered multiple alternative answers and why they were all wrong. Search Engine Land editor Danny Sullivan got a vague statement from Google about the whole ordeal which mentioned an update would be coming in the following weeks. This statement and the translated version of the Google Korea blog post about it (thanks GoogleUnexplainedPhenomenon.com) led us and many others to believe this is likely the first of a series of hints that Google will be using to provide clues to a puzzle. And TechCrunch reader x pete offered a really good lead in the comments of our earlier post that could well have solved the mystery early. Check out the website for the O Campaign, which is a “non-profit campaign forging alliances between the public, academia, corporations, and institutions in effort to efficiently channel resources for high-paced development of cutting-edge research in cancer prevention”. Looks like something Google would be involved with, right? Now check out who is co-directing this admirable campaign: Thalas’ Joseph James Jung, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and philantropist who currently spends his time collaborating with chief executives and boards of selected companies, universities and organizations. The first company that gets mentioned in his bio? You guessed it: Google. Is this the explanation for the unexplained phenomenon and will Google be symbolically donating one of the letters of its company name to the campaign? Or just another wild stab in the dark? The truth is out there, and we’re clearly not the only ones looking for it.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Microsoft’s ‘Ten Grand’ Competition Ends, Was Actually Pretty Clever Posted: 06 Sep 2009 03:31 AM PDT
Anyway, the treasure hunt apparently ended quietly a while back, when the campaign’s Twitter account announced that on August 18 someone had successfully retrieved both a website address and the password needed to access it. The winner, Gavin Ballard, was announced 11 days ago and I just stumbled across this blog post on i.techreport who revealed that the website was FastSafePrivateBetter.com and the password was ‘Courval’. When you go to that website and enter the password, you can download a document with all the answers to the clues that were provided by Microsoft in order to find where the $10,000 was ‘buried’. Or you can just download the doc here or view the answers in the embedded file below. Reading the document, I have to admit the campaign was more elaborate than I’d have thought and actually quite clever. The clues that were transmitted through the campaign’s Twitter account (which currently only has about 3550 followers left) were apparently quite mind-challenging at times and often required the treasure hunter to use Microsoft’s and many other - some even competing - online products to solve the puzzles. It took Ballard 67 clues and 65 days to get to the correct answer. And now I’m wishing I had participated in the online treasure hunt too. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| As Other Real-Time Search Engines Fizzle, OneRiot Gets Some Early Traction Posted: 05 Sep 2009 11:49 PM PDT
While there have been many real-time search engine launches over the past few months (Scoopler, Topsy, Collecta, CrowdEye), most of them so far have fizzled (see Google Website Trends chart above). After an initial burst of curiosity, interest tends to dive. One exception, however, is OneRiot, which appears to be gaining some early traction in the real-time search race. This race has just begun, of course, and other real-time search startups are chasing hard. But OneRiot is already serving up results for more than one million search queries a day (see chart below). This would be a rounding error for any major search engine, but at least it is going in the right direction. Its investors think so. They ponied up another $7 million in a new round at the end of last month OneRiot started to be noticed when it added link search from Twitter last May. But its search volume didn’t really take off until it launched its API, allowing other sites to tap into its real-time search and add it as a feature to their own Web app or site. OneRiot has 40 API partners, including Microsoft (sometimes bundled with IE)., browser add-ons Yoono and Shareaholic, and desktop apps like Nambu and EventBox. All of these API partnerships add up. In fact, about 80 percent of OneRiot’s searches are coming through its APIs rather than directly on its site. OneRiot is building up market share by offering real-time search to others. (Rival Collecta is preparing to do the same thing by offering its own APIs soon). Search is a volume game, where the more search queries you can process, the better your results become. So OneRiot wants to power as many real-time searches as possible. To the extent that OneRiot can familiarize people with the concept of real-time search in as many places as possible, that’s a good thing. But ultimately it needs to drive people back to OneRiot.com where it can control the entire experience (and the cash).
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| WITN?: Brazil nuts, American idiots and whoever else I have to upset around here to keep my job Posted: 05 Sep 2009 04:48 PM PDT
A few hours earlier, Sarah Lacy had published a post about the difficulties she’d had receiving her visa to Brazil to research her book and report on start-ups for TechCrunch. I'd read the post and sympathized with Sarah's frustration. The problem, apparently, had been caused by an ‘upgrade’ of Brazilian embassy computer systems and the resulting havoc had affected everyone from journalists to business people to the coach of a national football - sorry, ’soccer’ - team. As Sarah wrote, it also meant that she would now not be able to meet any of the scores of startups who had hoped to speak to a visiting TechCrunch reporter. If I were one of those startups, I’d be pissed. I’d be pissed at my government for not getting their technology together, and I’d be pissed generally that I’d missed an opportunity to showcase my business on a foreign stage. I might even post a comment saying as much. Glancing at TechCrunch on Thursday evening, then, I half-expected to see maybe a couple of dozen comments on the post. But no. There were hundreds. Almost 500 in fact, and just about every one of them was attacking Sarah specifically, and American visa policy, generally. How dare you insult Brazil!” they cried, “You stupid Americans demand that Brazilians have visas to visit your country; why shouldn’t we do the same?” Some of them used words like “reciprocity” and “pay back”. One even called Sarah a 'gringa', which was cute and in no way played to a stereotype. Many – who clearly knew all about the months of planning Sarah had done for her trip - angrily suggested that she should have started applying from the visa earlier. A vocal minority was additionally livid that the post was illustrated by a mashup - culled from Google images - of the Brazilian flag and the ‘EPIC FAIL’ meme. Some demanded criminal penalties for the outrage. It was whatever the Portuguese is for a train wreck. Puzzled, I read the post again. Clearly I’d missed something on my first reading. Obviously Sarah – who, let's remember, has been TC’s most vocal advocate for relaxing US visa laws for foreign entrepreneurs - had called for Brazil to be bombed back to the stone age, or suggested its womenfolk were unclean. But no, she really had just complained that a computer upgrade had inconvenienced her and thousands of other travelers who already had been approved for visas but who hadn't been delivered them on the day they were promised. As a foreigner on these shores, the subject is one close to my heart, which is why I’d read - and sympathised with - the post in the first place. Not long ago, I went through the visa process to relocate to the US from the UK. I had a far smoother experience than many of my European friends who are still flailing around in H1B or O1 hell, but I still had to struggle through a dull process of bureaucracy, money, police checks, paperwork, money, waiting, interviews, money and bullshit. And money. In fact, the only truly smooth aspect came right at the end, once I’d been approved for the visa and was told my passport would be returned three days later. With that, I booked my flight and, sure enough, at exactly 9am on the third day, a courier arrived on my doorstep clutching my newly visa-d passport. Had there been an unexpected delay after being told I could make travel plans, I’d have been furious: there’s no excuse for missing deadlines when you’ve promised they’ll be met. Reciprocity and forward planning have nothing to do with it; it’s just bureaucratic sloppiness. On that front, the Brazilian embassy had failed. Epically. And what about this flag business? I mean, seriously. If I understand you correctly, Brazilians, Photoshopping your national symbol with a joke meme is an unforgivable affront to your nationhood, and yet painting it across your girlfriend's breasts at a soccer game or screen-printing it on a tiny g-string is a wonderful celebration of national identity? Maybe we Brits are just under-sensitive, but frankly you could Photoshop a defaced picture of the queen onto our flag and you wouldn’t hear a peep of complaint. Except perhaps that you stole our idea. So if it wasn't the visa issue, or the flag, really the only justification I could find for the Brazilian commenters’ rage was Sarah’s remark that her husband was worried about her traveling to the country due its reputation for violence. This is of course typical American paranoia of all points foreign. “The natives are savages! We won’t be able to walk the streets in safety!” they whine, in a hideously unfair characterisation of a gentle, welcoming people. No wonder some Brazilians were upset with Sarah, to the point where they posted comments threatening to spit in her face and rape her. And that's where I realized that something was terribly awry. Sarah writes a story about bureaucratic ineptitude and broken promises, illustrated by a mildly clichéd Photoshop, and her safety is threatened by a mob of lunatic Brazilians. Arrington disses a few start-ups over the years and a mental German spits in his face at DLD. Erick writes a controversial headline about a multinational music service and the threats get so serious that TechCrunch has to call in the cops to protect its staff. And that’s just the foreigners. The Americans are just as bad: last week Vivek Wadhwa received hundreds upon hundreds of furiously xenophobic responses to his guest post - many suggesting that the Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Executive in Residence at Duke University was unwelcome on American soil. His crime? Suggesting that it should be easier for skilled foreign workers to get H1B visas. A suggestion, by the way, which was later linked to and supported by Newt Fucking Gingrich. I don’t get it. Where am I going so wrong? I was hired by TechCrunch specifically to be the controversial one. Unlike the rest of the writers here, who have actual reporting credentials, my whole shtick is saying inflammatory things and inciting furious debate among morons. To that end, in my very first column I declared war on anonymous commenters, making it absolutely clear how much I hate every last one of them, and even threatening to bludgeon the little basement-dwellers to death with their own Wil Wheaton action figures. But nothing. Since then I've tried to up my game. I've promoted scientifically dubious fad cleanses, I've called out lying company spokespeople and threatened to name and shame them, I've applauded Google for its anti-trust activities and suggested that Microsoft would commit genocide if it was commercially expedient. I've written an entire column attacking Drudge-reading Republican ditto heads who object to Obama's attempts to control the Internet. Hell, I've even admitted to once being a magician. But still nothing. How is it possible I've attacked Republicans and not received my own death threats? What's the point in them deliberately misinterpreting the spirit of the Second Amendment if they're not going to use the handguns strapped to their thighs to intimidate a foreigner? Where are my globules of Teutonic sputum or my sickening threats of violence? What does a man have to do around here to get threatened with rape by a Brazilian? Frankly, I'm starting to get worried for my job. Every week Arrington gets off on threatening to fire me - but so far I've clung on to the gig, mainly because I keep convincing him that I'll be a source of controversy and excitement. And yet week in, week out I'm getting my ass handed to me by just about everyone else on TechCrunch. And they're not even trying. Clearly I have to up my game. Over the coming weeks the gloves are going to have to come off. I'm going to have to go all-out with deliberately provocative headlines and racist ledes in the hope of prompting a mob of moronically illiterate textually-violent misogynist dickweeds to abuse me. Only then will my controversy crown be restored and my survival here assured. From next week then, you can look forward to column titles like… "Did the state of Israel just pass data to the RIAA?" "CBS's acquisition of Last.fm: smartest American deal with a German since Werner von Braun?" "US education hasn't produced a decent one since Oklahoma: so why is it so hard for foreign bombers to get H1B visas?" "The Fanboys from Brazil: why Latin American Mac users are even more insufferably smug than those in the rest of the world" "The French are Lazy, Americans are fat, Brits have bad teeth, Palestinians are all terrorists and the Swiss got rich on Nazi gold - and it's all the fault of AT&T" "Fuck you, Belgium" …and probably something about South Africans being boorish and ignorant. They're always good for a fight. And then, after I write those, I’m imploring the comment idiots amongst you to do your worst. Once you've finished skimming my words, misinterpreting my every premise and forming your knee-jerk, nationalistic response - please, please be sure to hack it out in the comments. Don't worry about accuracy, grammar or even basic literacy: it's a numbers game and you freaks are my last hope at keeping this gig. After all, where will I be without my job as Controversialist in Residence at TechCrunch? Destitute, that’s where. A poor, jobless, bitter loser with a strange accent, forced to beg for money from my neighbors to survive. Oh, God, I'll be Welsh. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Maps Wars: How Google, Microsoft And Yahoo Deal With Bridge Closure Posted: 05 Sep 2009 12:14 PM PDT
Residents of San Francisco are a bit put off by the temporary closure of the Bay Bridge this holiday weekend. For the next 2+ days, the short bridge commute between the city and the East bay is closed, forcing people to take 30 mile detours through Marin County to get to Oakland, Berkeley and beyond. This is a perfect opportunity to test the map products on the major Internet portals. Who noted the temporary closure and helped users figure out the next best route? The short answer - Google wins. Yahoo a close second, and Microsoft Bing fails in this particular test. Google Maps notes the closure, telling users “The Bay Bridge is closed from September 4 to September 8. Try dragging your route to a different path.” Yahoo also seems to know about the closure, but doesn’t mention it to users. Instead, it routes you 35 miles through Marin county and over two other bridges to get to your destination. This is useful, but without pointing out that the Bay Bridge is closed, most people will likely think it’s a glitch and simply try the easier route (and be disappointed). Microsoft Bing fails this test completely. Oblivious to the current road conditions, it blithely tells users to use the Bay Bridge to zip on over to Oakland. Thanks to Noah Veltman for the tip, and the stunning image of the Bay Bridge above was taken by Thomas Hawk.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
Google’s 
Remember that online competition Microsoft Australia set up where they’d 
Glancing at TechCrunch late on Thursday evening, I immediately realised there was trouble afoot.
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