The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Israeli Company Lands US Patent That Could Make Internet Search Giants Pay
- Mediaite Partners With Magnify.Net To Power Video Platform
- Here’s What to Expect from Tomorrow’s Apple iPod Event
- Silentale To Archive And Search All Your Conversations – Get Your Invites
- Flickr Finally Goes Native With An iPhone App
- The Inevitable Move Of iTunes To The Cloud
- Opera 10 Downloaded 10 Million Times In Its First Week
- Survey Monkey Growing Like A Weed, Fills Out Exec Team
- URDB: What’s Your World Record?
- Former Yahoo Exec Brad Garlinghouse Joins AOL
- AIM Now Goes Both Ways (With Twitter And Facebook)
- Squarespace Tries To Attract More Users With New Importing Tool
- Google’s Monopoly: The Board Game, Not Antitrust
- Wordpress.com Enables RSSCloud In Post Feeds
- Happy Labor Day From Ze Frank, You Socialist
- SwingVine Keeps A Pulse On What’s Trending On The Web
- Making Augmented Reality Browsers Even Better With Panoramic And Bird’s-Eye Zooming
- Android Market: 10,000+ Applications Strong Today
- TinyGrab Combines Mac Screen Grabs With Small URLs For Easy Image Sharing
- Workers Of The World, Meet Your Robot Replacements
| Israeli Company Lands US Patent That Could Make Internet Search Giants Pay Posted: 08 Sep 2009 07:31 AM PDT
Refuah, who started the company 12 years ago when he was barely 17 years old, is careful not to overestimate the awarding of the patent and the possible outcome for now, but that didn’t stop the company’s stock from soaring yesterday. The technological centerpiece of the patent, referred to as ‘www.addressing’, basically allows internet surfers to type a site’s name directly into the address bar or search box and get rerouted to a website straight away, without getting search results to choose from first. For example, if one were to type “techcrunch” in the URL field of a browser, the program would access this site right away without initiating a search query first. Furthermore, the infamous ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button on the Google homepage reportedly uses Netex technology that has now been successfully patented in the United States. According to Refuah, search giants like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have been using the program that was developed by his company for years, and now they will have to pay royalties to Netex directly. The patent was first applied for in 1998 and will only expire in 20 years. In a statement made to Ynetnews, Refuah says he has huge plans for the company, which is mostly known for operating Netex, a leading Israeli Internet navigation service that the company claims has captured over 50% of the market. He remains cautious about making claims regarding potential profits gained from the patent but adds that he has a ‘good feeling’ about it. During the next four weeks Netex Corporation and its legal counsels – experts on American patent, intellectual property and technology law – intend to explore licensing possibilities with all of the major Internet search players. Investors smell gold already, however. The news made the Israeli company’s stock soar by 144%, increasing its net worth by more than $30 million overnight. (Hat tip to Ouriel)
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Mediaite Partners With Magnify.Net To Power Video Platform Posted: 08 Sep 2009 07:00 AM PDT
Magnify.net has steadily grown its white label video platform in a highly competitive environment. Over the past year, Magnify has accumulated over 50 big name clients which are using Magnify’s video technology, including Zappos, New York Magazine and The Weather Channel. Today, Magnify is announcing its latest catch, Dan Abrams’ recently-launched media news site Mediaite and its sister gossip news site GossipCop.com. Mediaite, according to Abrams, is similar to Gawker and Huffington Post in that the site analyzes and reports on news relating to all things media. But Abrams hopes to differentiate Mediaite from its competitors with innovative content features, including a video platform. For example, Mediaite publishes a power grid which categorizes and ranks players in the media industry (1581 from 380 media companies to be exact) with the help of a proprietary algorithm. Magnify.net’s video aggregation platform will automatically collect videos from YouTube, Vimeo and other sites via keyword. Editors will be alerted when there’s a video that matches select keywords. Visitors to the branded video platform can also submit videos. As we wrote following the implosion of Joost, branded, white label video platforms is a growing business. Magnify’s founder Steve Rosenbaum told us a few months ago that the growth of the video hosting site has helped boost the start-up’s revenue power, with Magnify expected to be cash-flow positive by the end of the year. Competitors in the space include Brightcove and Ooyala. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Here’s What to Expect from Tomorrow’s Apple iPod Event Posted: 08 Sep 2009 04:28 AM PDT
First, just a reminder that we’ll be covering the event live tomorrow starting at 10am Pacific/1pm Eastern. We’ll be using our liveblogging platform so you won’t have to go nuts refreshing the page. 1. There will be iPods with cameras. The Nano and the Touch should get cameras, we’re not certain on the iPod Classic. The camera is believed to be the 3.2-megapixel model inside the iPhone 3G. Here’s what we can conjecture: 1. A new version of iTunes should appear with some sort of social networking built in along with cloud-based playlists you can share with your friends. Here’s what won’t happen:
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Silentale To Archive And Search All Your Conversations – Get Your Invites Posted: 08 Sep 2009 04:05 AM PDT
So how are we going to deal with it – search it, store it? That’s the problem Silentale is planning to address, and the startup has just opened it’s private beta to start testing it’s platform. Put simply, Silentale is aiming to store all your digital conversations – Twitter, Email and even SMS – in one place and allow you to access and search them from anywhere. We have 200 invites for TechCrunch readers for the free private beta. Just leave a comment to get on the list. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Flickr Finally Goes Native With An iPhone App Posted: 08 Sep 2009 03:21 AM PDT
Yahoo’s Flickr app has just gone live in the App Store. After only a little bit of time using it, I can tell that I’m going to like it. The main screen is a fairly mesmerizing slideshow of photos from your contacts on Flickr. There is an upload button that is easily accessible right on the main page, and the upload process is nice and easy. You can obviously name your picture and give it a description, but you can also easily manage what set to put it in, and what tags to give it. And the privacy settings are very clearly displayed on the upload page. There has been no shortage of third-party applications that used Flickr’s pictures, but this app matches the look and feel of Flickr proper much more closely than any of them. Individual photo pages look great and commenting is easy. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be an easy way to send pictures to Twitter, except through the emailing method. The main page search functionality works well, and thumbnails are populated quickly. If you click on a photo, you can also go to a larger version loaded in a different screen that allows you to swipe left and right to move between images. It does not look like pinch to zoom works, however. You can find the app for free in the App Store here.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| The Inevitable Move Of iTunes To The Cloud Posted: 08 Sep 2009 03:09 AM PDT
But it’s entirely possible that Jobs won’t be leading this event. And it’s starting to look more possible that what’s thought to be the key product, iPods with cameras, may have to be delayed. And that tablet computer seems pretty unlikely. And The Beatles on iTunes is far from a lock. In other words, there are a lot of possible ways that Apple could disappoint with this event. But Apple doesn’t like to disappoint, it likes to surprise. And that’s why I’m holding out hope for a big one: iTunes in the cloud. Now, the likelihood of Apple announcing this on Wednesday seems fairly small. After all, even if Apple has to delay the launch of it iPods with cameras, it will still likely announce them at the event. And it likely has a new, more social iTunes 9, and its new “Cocktail” music format ready to be announced as well. All of that would seem to be enough for what will be a relatively small event in San Francisco — especially if Jobs does take the stage. But, as myself and others have noted before, iTunes in the cloud is inevitable. An Expansion Of Music When iTunes was confined solely to music on your desktop, life was good. There was a lot of talk about how subscription-based streaming services would kill the pay-to-download iTunes model, but that never happened. Instead, iTunes continued to dominate the landscape.
And iTunes itself is evolving. As we are likely to see on Wednesday, Apple and the music labels are pushing for these new “Cocktail” type album downloads that feature much more than just music. A key component is likely to be video, which obviously takes up a lot more space than music. That, alongside Apple’s move earlier this year to a fully iTunes Plus (DRM-free) store, has meant that the space needed to hold all of this music has been going up. As most people have computers these days with large hard drives, they have been able to handle iTunes music on their machines without much trouble. But a push for more video — especially if it’s HD video — will mean more storage that is needed. And that’s before we get to the real keys to the iTunes in the cloud idea: Movies and television shows. iTunes’ Video Problem Apple has obviously been increasing its movie and television show library over the past few years. It now has a fairly robust offering, including many shows and movies in high definition (HD). But have you ever really looked at the size of those files? Anyone who has more than a few of them likely has, because you were probably forced to, as you were running out of room on your hard drive. Let’s look at the most recent season of ABC’s show Lost. If you bought the HD Season Pass of the show on iTunes, that’s 28.2 GB of data on your hard drive. That’s one season. Of one show.
The way to combat this problem right now is to do what I did: Buy terabyte external hard drives. But let’s be honest, most average consumers are not going to do that. If and when they see that their entire hard drive has been eaten up by season 3 of My Name Is Earl, they’re going to be upset. It’s probably more likely that they’d simply delete the content. But should they really have to do that for content they paid for? Of course not. Apple’s Options That leaves Apple with two options: 1) Offer television show rentals. This is certainly something it could, and may do, but it would be a short-term fix. 2) Move iTunes fully to the cloud.
If you bought a television show, movie or even song, you’d be able to stream it from Apple’s servers. Or, if you wanted to take it on the go, on your iPod or iPhone, you could download it and store a physical copy locally. There would be no risk in deleting content locally when you were done with it, because Apple would have a copy for you to obtain again. Concerns Now, this idea is so obvious that it has to be coming, right? Well, there are obviously some concerns as well. First, security. The music labels and television and movie studios would want assurances from Apple that no one could “game the system” and get access to content for free. With iTunes in the cloud, Apple would likely have to partially rework the 5 computers-at-a-time system for iTunes that it uses right now (for DRM content), but something similar would probably be intact. The second concern would be cost. Apple undoutbedly spends a lot of money now serving music and movies over iTunes, but it’s for the most part a one-time deal, where a user pays and then downloads the content. If you introduce streaming into the mix, costs will go up. But perhaps that is part of the reason behind Apple’s new massive 500,000 sqaure foot datacenter in North Carolina — which will be one of the largest in the world. Untenable
Meanwhile, there’s a movement underway to more portable machines that feature smaller amounts of storage. Obviously, there are netbooks, but you can also be sure that Apple’s tablet device, when it comes out, will not have a terabyte of storage. And Apple itself has been starting to push faster, but smaller capacity, SSD drivers in its laptop lines. The larger point is that while it’s great to own your own content, most customers likely do not want terabytes of data cluttering up their machines. It becomes a huge management burden. And if you get a new machine, transfers are a hassle. There are some other short-term solutions, like the aforementioned TV show rentals, but long term, the only viable model would seem to be Apple holding all of this content for us on its servers. Streaming a huge collection of movies works beautifully right now for Netflix via its Watch Instantly service. Apple would need a download component to supplement its portable devices, but it likely can and will be done. Months ago, there were rumors of such a service called “iTunes Replay” for iTunes 8, but nothing ever came of them. But since then, Apple has launched services like HD movie downloads — the need for such a service is only getting greater. And it will continue to. Apple chose to use a Rolling Stones’ lyric as the tagline for this event, “It’s only rock and roll, but we like it.” Here’s to hoping that they work in another Stones’ lyric as well, “On my cloud, baby.”
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Opera 10 Downloaded 10 Million Times In Its First Week Posted: 08 Sep 2009 01:52 AM PDT
In the first week after its release and after many favorable reviews – including our own – Opera Software has announced that its revamped desktop browser has been downloaded 10 million times and is now in use by millions of users around the world. For Opera, this is a record achievement. If my own experience is anything to go by, these users are happy users. As I wrote before, Opera 10 is blazing fast – comparable to the speed I was experiencing with Google Chrome – and that’s a huge plus. It doesn’t hurt that everything ‘just works’ either, and I’m already so used to the (all new) Opera interface that it’d be hard for me to switch again. If you haven’t tried out Opera 10 yet, do it now. You won’t be disappointed. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Survey Monkey Growing Like A Weed, Fills Out Exec Team Posted: 08 Sep 2009 01:39 AM PDT
They never raised outside funding and grew the business to a rumored $30 million in revenue in 2008, with 85% EBITDA margins. This year revenue will be more like $45 million, we’ve heard (the company won’t comment). That’s when the big money rolled in. Spectrum Equity Investors and Bain Capital Ventures injected capital into the company earlier this year, the founders took most of it off the table, and ex-Yahoo exec Dave Goldberg was brought in as CEO. Today Survey Monkey has offices in Menlo Park (the former CBS Interactive offices) and 20 million monthly unique visitors, says the company. They have 32 employees, up from 14 a year ago, and the product continues to grow like a weed. Goldberg has also brought in a new executive team to help him handle the growth, and says that the company will soon open an office in Europe for customer support. New execs include VP Engineering Selina Tobaccowala, who was previously an exec at Ticketmaster's Europe division, and was the cofounder of Evite. New VP Finance Noreen Bergin spent five years as SVP of Finance and Corporate Controller for Netscape in the 90s, and VP Business Development Tim Maly just ended a six year run at Google. Most recently, Maly led the Inside Sales and Sales Strategy & Operations teams for AdWords North America. This is obviously a company on a roll, no matter how ugly you say their homepage is. Small businesses love this stuff, and are willing to pay for it. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| URDB: What’s Your World Record? Posted: 07 Sep 2009 11:53 PM PDT
Enter the Universal Records Database, or URDB. The site, founded by Dan Rollman and Corey Henderson, first launched in November 2008. The two first started doing their own world record camp at Burning Man in 2004, and the idea evolved from there. From the history of URDB: “Camp visitors were dreaming up and setting unique, creative and spectacular records. They were taking great pride in their feats. Competition was fierce, with record setters returning daily to make sure their achievements hadn't been topped.” Fast forward to today. Over 1,000 wild and wacky world records have been set on URDB, and about 1/3 of those have been broken. Among my favorites: Most Giraffe Tattoos On A Shoulder (record is currently a mere 4), Tallest Tower Of Humans Wearing One Sock Each, Brushing Teeth And Listening To ‘Thriller’ (record is four) and Most Bunnies Snuggled With In A Hammock (record is 50, but actress Cameron Diaz briefly held the record with 48 bunnies):
The point is you can do what you want and have fun with it. But there’s a serious side too. Rollman told me earlier today that they fully intend the site to evolve into a serious records site that will compete with Guinness. There are many parallels to what Wikipedia did to the old Encyclopedia companies. There’s no reason for a group of people to try to control the process, and there’s nothing wrong with people trying to set a record for the tallest tower of humans wearing one sock each while brushing their teeth and listening to Thriller. Nothing wrong with that at all. URDB has just closed their first round of financing – an angel round that included an investment from Chris Sacca. We’ll be setting a world record at the TechCrunch offices sometime this week, and another next week at TechCrunch50 involving the audience. Have any great ideas? let us know below. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Former Yahoo Exec Brad Garlinghouse Joins AOL Posted: 07 Sep 2009 09:45 PM PDT
The newest hire: former Yahoo exec Brad Garlinghouse will join AOL as President of Internet and Mobile Communications. Garlinghouse will report directly to CEO Tim Armstrong. Garlinghouse will take control of AOL’s mail and instant messaging products. He’ll also head AOL’s Silicon Valley operations in Mountain View and serve as west coast lead for AOL Ventures. Bebo, acquired by AOL in early 2008, is now part of AOL Ventures. Garlinghouse was most recently an advisor to Silver Lake Partners. Prior to that he spent nearly six years at Yahoo in a variety of executive roles. His last role at Yahoo was SVP Communications and Communities. His team grew Yahoo Mail to the no. 1 mail provider during his tenure, from no. 3 when he arrived at Yahoo. AOL SVP David Liu was also strongly considered as a candidate for the position, we’ve heard from multiple sources. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| AIM Now Goes Both Ways (With Twitter And Facebook) Posted: 07 Sep 2009 09:36 PM PDT
In July, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) embraced the stream in a new beta (for both Windows and Mac) and started moving beyond simple IMs. You can now see your Facebook and Twitter feeds, along with AIM buddy updates and feeds from other services. The problem was that the Twitter and Facebook feeds were only one way. You could read them, but you couldn’t send updates from AIM to the other services. A few weeks ago that changed, and AIM status updates can now appear as updates in Facebook and Twitter as well. There also appears to be a way to comment, or respond, inline to other people’s messages, although I am having trouble getting that feature to work for some reason. Going both ways turns AIM into a full-fledged Twitter/Facebook client. It is a big deal for AIM because now it can be used as both a private and public IM client. While stream readers such as TweetDeck and Seesmic already have two-way messaging capabilities with Twitter and Facebook, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger are still stuck in Read-Only Land. The AIM Beta doesn’t have the Twitter integration working perfectly yet. Some updates and comments seem to never get through, while others do just fine. On the Facebook side, it is working much smoother. But AIM is making the right moves in an attempt to become an all-in-one instant communications hub. AOL’s new communications chief, Brad Garlinghouse, should keep pushing in this direction. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Squarespace Tries To Attract More Users With New Importing Tool Posted: 07 Sep 2009 03:40 PM PDT
Squarespace’s new blog importing tool supports most of the main publishing platforms; Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad and Movable Type. After entering your login credentials, the Importer Tool will migrate all of your old blog posts, comments, tags, authors and more to your new Squarespace site. Squarespace is also working directly with Amazon S3 — Squarespace will bring all the media from your old posts and ensure these files are uploaded to Squarespace’s Amazon S3 account. For users who want to retain custom domains, Squarespace will use the URL structure of your existing site and create mappings for every single one of your old posts automatically. Squarespace’s founder, Anthony Casalena tells us that Squarespace submitted an iPhone application to the App Store two weeks ago, which hasn’t been approved yet and should be coming “soon.” Also, this is the only current way to exit a self-hosted site right now. This importing tool is a big plus for any blogger wanting to move over to Squarespace, because you keep your SEO and page ranks, as well as all your content. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Google’s Monopoly: The Board Game, Not Antitrust Posted: 07 Sep 2009 03:19 PM PDT
All the details aren’t clear yet, as the game won’t launch until September 9. But it would appear that Hasbro, makers of the Monopoly game, is attempting to turn the franchise into a massively multi-player online game. Called “Monopoly City Streets,” here’s a brief description that is offered on the teaser site:
It’s also not clear if this game will be an official partnership with Google, or if Hasbro is simply using Google Maps APIs. But the tie-in goes a bit deeper, as is revealed on the blog it set up for the game (on yes, Google’s Blogger platform). A post from Friday reads:
So it’s not just Google Maps, but also SketchUp that Hasbro is utilizing for this game. The UK’s Guardian is reporting that the game will run for 4 months. They’re also reporting that players starting a new game will get $3 million to play around with. Without seeing it in action, this sounds like a brilliant idea for a massively multi-player online game. You’ll apparently be able to buy an property in the world. Of course, the social element that links together will be key, and it’s not yet clear what that will be. The Monopoly City Streets blog uses Google Friend Connect, but perhaps the game will have its own social web. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Wordpress.com Enables RSSCloud In Post Feeds Posted: 07 Sep 2009 03:15 PM PDT
RSSCloud is a new format specification for feeds that solves polling and notification issues. It works by adding a The protocol was designed by Dave Winer, who also drafted the original RSS specification and pioneered the use of feeds as a way to aggregate content. RSSCloud allows feeds to be more responsive and real-time. Rather than a polling model (’are we there yet, are we there yet’), it pushes updates and update notifications down to subscribers via a cloud server and API. The new protocol took a big step forward today as Wordpress.com enabled the cloud tag on all post feeds (comment feeds will be enabled at some later point). Winer tweeted about it today, and Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg has since confirmed in an email that all Wordpress.com blog feeds now support the tag. If you view the source of a feed on Wordpress, such as this one, you can see the new tag:
A cloud notification server is defined for each This could also mean the beginning of a new format war for the real-time web, reminiscent of the old RSS vs Atom battles. Another groups of developers, lead by Brad Fitzpatrick, published a format and cloud hub known as pubsubhubbub, which is now being supported by Google Reader. There is sure to be much discussion of Wordpress.com falling into the RSSCloud camp, and which protocol/format/method etc. is better than the other (a debate we will engage in on this blog, no doubt). Services such as Twitter and Friendfeed centralize real-time data and updates. RSSCloud and broader support of such a protocol is a step in the direction of decentralizing such services. Update: The Wordpress.com blog now has a post about the update
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Happy Labor Day From Ze Frank, You Socialist Posted: 07 Sep 2009 02:39 PM PDT
Frank rose to popularity in the first half of the 2000s, first for his website, and later for his daily video blog, The Show With Ze Frank. After that ended in 2007, he signed with the Hollywood talent agency UTA, and sort of fell off the map, but apparently he’s now making videos for Time. That’s great as they’re apparently allowing him to compare Labor Day to Socialism — which is hilarious. Now, if only Time would let you embed videos larger than a postage stamp. Lame. Among the gems:
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| SwingVine Keeps A Pulse On What’s Trending On The Web Posted: 07 Sep 2009 02:20 PM PDT  There are many sites that try to help consumers keep a pulse on the buzz of what’s happening on the web. StumbleUpon, iLike, and others all try to help users search for and find specific, personalized content on the web that may be appealing to them. SwingVine is trying to serve this purpose by aggregating data and news from across the web, analyzing the volume of online buzz, the reputation of various sources, user interactions on the site itself, and other information to surface the the most popular and noteworthy content on the web. It’s a hybrid of an aggregator of information on pop culture and news and an analytics site that actually measures what people are looking for on the web. Content on SwingVine spreads over a number of verticals including music, movies, technology, gadgets, fashion and more. When you click on a recent story or album, you will be led to a page that includes a detailed description of the subject, related media, video and images, and a RSS feed of blogs and news sites that have written about the topic. You can also rate and comment on the item, and share your comment on Facebook, Digg or MySpace. SwingVine is designed to be a discovery search engine for people to not only see what’s buzzing on the web, but also make sense of it. It’s purpose is noble; with so much content emerging on the web, from music to movies to news and tech gadgets, there is a need for a tool to help people know what’s worth reading into. SwingVine will face the challenge of competing with small yet well-funded niche social search engines like OneRiot and Blekko, that also offer users a way to see the chatter on the web. And of course, Google Trends and Twitter’s trending topics sites like TweetMeme also serve a similar purpose as SwingVine.  Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Making Augmented Reality Browsers Even Better With Panoramic And Bird’s-Eye Zooming Posted: 07 Sep 2009 01:17 PM PDT One of the most exciting, gee-whiz features being developed for mobile phones right now are augmented reality browsers. Rather than fire up a mobile Web browser like Safari or Opera, these generally add an information layer over the world as seen through your phone’s camera lens. Last year at TechCrunch50, Tonchidot’s Sekai Camera wowed the crowd with its AR browser demo, Layar is creating a lot of buzz in Europe, and this summer AR technologies finally started to hit the market. You had Yelp sneak in an AR feature into its latest iPhone app, and a growing number of Android apps are embracing AR as well. We are at the very early stages of what may very well become a common interface for mobile browsing, which means that it is still very primitive. You can only click on buildings or objects within your immediate view. Daniel Wagner, a virtual reality researcher at Graz University of Technology in Austria, is proposing two ways to make AR browsing better: panoramic and bird’s-eye zooming. In the video above, he demonstrates these two types of zooming techniques which allow the user to zoom out to see what else is around him, much like he would with an online map, select something to click on—maybe the museum two blocks over—and then zoom back in. The panoramic zoom gives the user a sense of other clickable items within a 360 degree view, whereas the bird’s-eye view gives a top-down picture that looks like a close-up satellite shot with clickable locations. Okay, so now we have panning and zooming. What someone needs to figure out next is an elegant way to hyperlink from one hotlinked location to another. That way you could teleport, at least virtually. (Via Games AlFresco, via @loic). Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Android Market: 10,000+ Applications Strong Today Posted: 07 Sep 2009 10:03 AM PDT  In the mobile OS world, Google's Android is still a challenger but with the amount of devices that will be running the system that are due to come out in the coming months alone in combination with its open approach it is definitely a contestant to watch closely. The success of Apple's App Store for the iPhone / iPod Touch is often measured by how many apps have already been developed for the platform (around 70,000), but since Google doesn't disclose exactly how many apps are available through Android Market it was difficult to compare the two on that particular level. But thanks to AndroLib, which provides a useful website where you can browse Android apps from your computer (unlike the Android Market website), we can conclude that there are currently at least 10,000 applications and games available on the platform today.TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| TinyGrab Combines Mac Screen Grabs With Small URLs For Easy Image Sharing Posted: 07 Sep 2009 10:00 AM PDT
TinyGrab is a simple utility for Mac OS X users using the power of Mac OS X's built in screenshot capabilites, TinyGrab instantly uploads and allows you to share your screen images with a small URL. TinyGrab is Mac only, but according to Keyone Productions, the company behind TinyGrab, there are Windows and Linux versions coming. Here’s how it works. You take a screen shot, like you usually would with Command + Shift + 4. Your screenshot will be uploaded to TinyGrab in the background in under 30 seconds. When TinyGrab turns green, the upload is complete and a link to the image copied to your clipboard. TinyGrab then generates a short URL for you to share across the web. If you have a premium account, you can upload your images through an FTP server, and search through your “grabs.” You can create a free user account, which gives you 3 free screenshots a day, plus the ability to share with a TinyGrab UR. Login to your account at TinyGrab.com and see past uploads, delete them or upgrade your account to a premium account for a one time payment of £10 payment, or $16 U.S. You’ll find a demo video below. Update: We have spoken to Chris Leydon from Keyone Productions, the company behind TinyGrab, and he mentioned that they offer 10 grabs for free now, and not 3. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
| Workers Of The World, Meet Your Robot Replacements Posted: 07 Sep 2009 09:10 AM PDT Industrial robots are nothing new, but they are getting more and more sophisticated. Watch the video above of the swarming robot warehouse pickers made by Kiva Systems. They are like orange industrial Roombas that go out and find inventory in a warehouse and bring it back to human workers to pack for shipping. Don’t fear them. Really, they are just here to help. Zappos and Staples use the systems, which are dispatched and controlled by a central computer, and can also detect each other to avoid collisions. Speaking of Roombas, Kiva Systems might soon have competition from MIT Robotics professor and iRobot co-founder Rodney Brooks. (iRobot manufactures the Roomba robot vacuum). Brooks recently got $7 million in funding from Jeff Bezos and others for his latest venture, Heartland Robotics. The company is still in stealth, but its homepage hints at what it is working on:
They sound so friendly! When are they going to create a blogging robot so I can take day off? (Hat tip to Hizook. Video by IEEE Spectrum Online). Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco |
Aviv Refuah, the young CEO of the public Israeli company 
What could be better? A short workweek, an Apple event tomorrow, and all is right with the world. But what can we expect from Big Cupertino tomorrow and what won’t we see at the event of the summer? Read on.
According to one estimate the total data storage capacity produced by humans each year is expected to surpass 1 
Despite having one of the most popular online photo services in the world, 
Here we are on the eve of another Apple event. There is never a shortage of hype surrounding these, but this one may have a bit more than normal because of the possibility that it could be Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ first public gig since returning to the company following a lengthy and 
But things are evolving. The new hotshot in the music space is 
Say you also bought last season of The Office (a 30-minute show versus the hour-long Lost), that’s 19.43 GB. Those two shows alone — again, just one season of each — have nearly 50 GB of your hard drive tied up right there. Throw a few HD movies (usually 3 to 4 GB each), and maybe a few more shows and you’re going to need hundreds of gigabytes for all of these. And God forbid you want the other 4 seasons of Lost or The Office.
Actually, iTunes is really already is in the cloud — kind of. If you delete a piece of content from your machine, Apple will allow you to download it again (at least once). This is more or less the idea of how iTunes in the cloud would work. Rather than storing all your media locally on your machine, it would be stored on iTunes’ servers in the cloud — which again, they’re already doing.
The fact of the matter is that any way you slice it, iTunes current model is untenable. Even if you opt to get standard definition video content from the service, we’re talking ten to a dozen gigabytes of storage needed for just one season of a television show. Movies are still over a gigabyte a piece. If you buy as much content as Apple and the studios would like you to, you’re going to fairly quickly get into the hundreds of gigabytes and then terabytes range. I should know, I’m already there.
Portland-born 
Having your very own world record is probably something you never knew you wanted. But if you think about it, who wouldn’t want to be the world’s best at something? The 
AOL, 
The blogging space is cluttered with lots of options including WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, MovableType, Squarespace, and many more. Today 
Increasingly these days you hear the words “Google” and “monopoly” in the same sentence. There is no shortage of fears that the search giant is getting too powerful in the search and online advertising space. But today, the two words are being joined for an entirely different reason: The board game Monopoly is about to launch an online version with Google Maps.
It’s Labor Day, and you’re sitting at your computer reading TechCrunch. That’s cool, we appreciate it. Here’s a fun video from Ze Frank with some of his thoughts on Labor Day to help you pass the time.
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