The Latest from TechCrunch

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• Hara Raises $14 Million Series B For Environmental Impact Monitoring Software
• German Blogger Manifesto On Journalism Makes Headlines
• Tweeting About The Gov 2.0 Summit May Cause Serious Account Suspension
• Socialtext Launches Mobile Version Of Twitter-Like Collaboration Platform
• Twitter And The Revenue Dilemma
• CeeVee Opens With A Mega-Simple CV Page Builder
• The Incredible Shrinking iPod Prices Undercut The Zune HD
• Hyperlocal Business Directory MerchantCircle Launches Consumer-Facing Features
• Great Expectations Of An Apple Event
• US Government To Embrace OpenID, Courtesy Of Google, Yahoo, PayPal Et Al.
• Woot.com Traffic As An Indicator of National Financial Stability
• Death, Taxes, Broken Twitter
• The Palm Pixi: A Smaller Pre But Without Wi-Fi
• TweetMixx Gets A Last Minute Stir As It Readies For Public Consumption
• TweetDeck Goes Full-Stream With MySpace, More Facebook Hooks, And A User Directory
• Google Voice Finally Marries SMS And Email
• JibJab Helps You (And A Friend) Bust A Move With Soul Train Partnership
• Want California Data In Your Sex Offender App? There’s A Lawyer For That.
• Everything You Need To Know About Salesforce’s Service Cloud 2
• Pioneers Of The (Not So) Inevitable May Have New Legs For Songbird
• Wikia Finds A Small Following And Some Profits
• New Facebook iPhone App Brings New Privacy Bugs With It
• Grammar Gaffe At Google Apps For Students
• Facebook On Android: Not Much To Review, But We Do It Anyway
• Did Yoko Ono And Sky News Just Ruin Apple’s Beatles Surprise?

Hara Raises $14 Million Series B For Environmental Impact Monitoring Software Posted: 09 Sep 2009 08:11 AM PDT More and more companies these days are trying to measure their environmental impact, and that is good business for startups like Hara, which provides Web-based environmental impact and energy monitoring software. Hara raised $14 million in a Series B funding today. The round was led by Jafco Ventures, with Nth Power and Kleiner participating. Hara was founded a year ago with a $6 million investment from Kleiner Perkins. Its software provides a way to measure a company’s carbon footprint and energy usage. The software-as-a-service then produces reports which can be audited. As more and more companies and governments introduce carbon emission policies and regulations, the need for such software will grow. Customers include Coca-Cola, the City of Palo Alto, and various multinational corporations. The new funds will be partly used to expand into Asia, which makes sense since environmental monitoring only works if you do it on a global basis. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

German Blogger Manifesto On Journalism Makes Headlines Posted: 09 Sep 2009 07:07 AM PDT After stirring up their own country’s commentators, the German blogger elite has launched an international version of their Internet Manifesto in English. Fifteen authors of Germany’s most popular blogs have signed a declaration about How journalism works today. The 17 articles run down from statements like “the Internet is different” and “the Internet improves journalism” to sideswipes against the old media, such as “tradition is not a business model”. The manifesto is causing a lot of interest and briefly took the site out at one stage. It’s pretty much an onslaught on old-school media and a reaction to German publishing heavyweights like Burda which is demanding a share of advertising revenues that search engines like Google make from trawling their content. Good luck with that. Let us know what you think of the Manifesto’s arguments in the comments. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Tweeting About The Gov 2.0 Summit May Cause Serious Account Suspension Posted: 09 Sep 2009 05:59 AM PDT In an ironic twist of fate, a number of people related to O’Reilly Media, as well as others guilty of using Twitter to express thoughts and commentary about and from the Gov 2.0 Summit, have found their accounts suspended this morning due to unspecified ’strange activity’. That includes prolific (and real) Twitter users such as Tim O’Reilly himself, but also other accounts related to the publishing and event company, such as O’Reilly Radar’s Brady Forrest (@brady), authors like Sean Power (@seanpower) and generic accounts including @w2e (for the Web 2.0 Expo) and @gov2events. Updated: most accounts that were wrongfully suspended are being reinstated one by one now. Mosey along now, nothing to see here Published author and blogging expert Debbie Weil also got banned from Twitter for the time being, and assumes it has something to do with the fact that the hashtag #gov20e was a trending topic yesterday and may have caused Twitter to automatically suspend the accounts of several users who have been keeping busy tweeting about and from the event using the identifier. Well in that case at least the company’s trying to combat spam. It’s most likely something like that, or it might be related to the downtime and other issues that has been plaguing the service for some time now. Either way, Twitter has a number of support tickets coming their way today. (Thanks to Sean for letting us know) Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Socialtext Launches Mobile Version Of Twitter-Like Collaboration Platform Posted: 09 Sep 2009 05:50 AM PDT Collaboration platform Socialtext is taking its package of enterprise 2.0 services to the smartphone. The startup has launched Socialtext Mobile, a web-based mobile version of the Socialtext collaboration platform. Socialtext’s President and co-founder, Ross Mayfield tells us that Socialtext’s mobile interface will offer much of the same functionality as Socialtext’s Adobe Air-powered desktop application, which launched earlier this year. Socialtext mobile will automatically detect when a user is logging in through a smartphone and provides access to the optimized Socialtext site. Via a Blackberry, iPhone or Android, users can see and post to their company’s Twitter-like message stream and access their company’s Socialtext Workspace, an enterprise-ready wiki. The platform’s SocialCalc collaborative spreadsheet offering is also accessible via the mobile interface. The message stream lets workers see the microblogging messages of the co-workers they are following. In addition, there is also an "activity" stream that generates a micro-message every time a person a user is following takes an action inside the Socialtext platform, such as creating a wiki page, writing a blog post, or making a comment. Socialtext’s collaboration tool has a newly launched freemium model and a paid service, but both platforms are available via mobile devices for free. There’s no doubt that being able to access enterprise applications from mobile devices is useful to companies and their employees. But for many big companies, security is a consideration when deploying enterprise apps in a mobile phone. Socialtext customers can leverage Motorola’s Good Mobile Connection to provide behind-the-firewall secure deployment of Socialtext’s information on mobile devices. Socialtext faces competition from Yammer, Jive and and WizeHive. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Twitter And The Revenue Dilemma Posted: 09 Sep 2009 04:04 AM PDT One thing every venture capitalist knows but rarely talks about is the “revenue problem” with hot startups. When a startup is “growing like gangbusters” as Twitter cofounder Biz Stone told Bloomberg today, they tend to get a lot of attention from suitors. Twitter has been growing so fast this year, they’re getting more attention than they probably know what to do with. And that presents a problem of sorts. The company has to decide whether or not to turn revenue on. It sounds ridiculous, but it is a real decision. Once revenue is on, how the company is valued by the market can change dramatically. Some of the biggest blockbuster acquisitions on the Internet have been pre-revenue companies. YouTube to Google for $1.65 billion in 2006 is one example. Reaching back further, Hotmail to Microsoft for $265 million in 1998 is another. Neither had any revenue to speak of, but both “owned” a new and fast growing market. And there are lots more examples. When you don’t have revenue you can’t be valued based on a multiple of revenues. For most companies that means you probably won’t be acquired. But if you happen to have invented something new and dominate the space (Hotmail with webmail, YouTube with online video), you can let the market speculate about your potential revenues and potential profits all day long. If you don’t believe that, see our post from 2006 with leaked Yahoo documents showing an internal valuation of Facebook of $1.62 billion based on revenue and profit figures that they pulled out of the sky. This wasn’t based on feedback from Facebook, it was based on their own assumptions on growth and monetization potential. And it turns out they only estimated about 1/10 of the actual user number Facebook would have by 2009. That was a YouTube/Hotmail style pre-revenue deal waiting to happen at a huge valuation. But Once You Have Revenue… Big public companies don’t make major acquisitions without made up spreadsheet models like the one linked to above. Their boards wouldn’t be protected from lawsuits if they didn’t. But the problem is, once you have revenues it’s impossible for the other side to just make stuff up. They look at those revenues and growth rates and trend out from there. They can’t add a different long term growth rate without a solid reason to do it. The result? Your valuation can actually go down once you turn on revenue. And if revenue isn’t as awesome as you think it might be, or you have other…cough…problems, you may be in real trouble. So when Twitter talks about turning on revenue, it isn’t such a small decision. They have no idea how much money they can make off the service. Selling data to search engines, display ads. Search based ads. Premium/business accounts, etc. There are no comparable revenue streams at other companies that they can fully rely on. Of course, if they get lucky and everything goes swimmingly, they can make a lot more money in the long run by not selling (see Google, which didn’t sell to Yahoo when they were pre-revenue). That’s a big if, though. Particularly when you’re talking about a new global scale communications service that is bottlenecked at a single centralized website with an iffy API. It’s not inconceivable that Twitter actually can’t scale as a centralized service, and will stumble badly. But that’s a different topic for a different blog post. Image Credit: Million Clues Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

CeeVee Opens With A Mega-Simple CV Page Builder Posted: 09 Sep 2009 04:03 AM PDT Coming along to give VisualCV and JobSpice a run for their money is new online CV builder CeeVee. It’s now opened up after being in private beta, and aside from the cute sounding name, it’s aim is simple – to be the simplest CV builder out there. But what is the point of CV sites like this when we have LinkedIn? Well, not everyone is into LinkedIn’s sparse, rather corporate presentation and so CeeVee – as it’s competors do – aims at the wide consumer marketplace with a simpler interface. Apparently Human Resources people aren’t keen on busy CVs (or maybe can’t cope with them?), hence this design approach. In addition LinkedIn doesn’t allow you to export or share your resume in a widgety, social way (as yet). The aim, as founder Lee Wilkins tells me, is to work with HR departments and companies to make a more standardized format. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

The Incredible Shrinking iPod Prices Undercut The Zune HD Posted: 09 Sep 2009 03:28 AM PDT We’re still hours away from Apple’s event today in San Francisco, but that apparently hasn’t stopped the company from releasing some changes in its own store. The main thing to note is the prices of the various iPod lines, especially the iPod touch. Yesterday, a 32 GB iPod touch was $399. Today? $279. Yesterday, a 16 GB version was $299. Today? $249. The 8 GB one is now only $189, down from $229. The nanos are falling as well, with the 16 GB version now only $149, and the 8 GB only $129, down from $199 and $149, respectively. The iPod classic has seen a $20 price cut. These price cuts were, of course, expected, and very likely point to a new 64 GB iPod touch being unveiled tomorrow in the $399 price point. Significantly, this means that the iPod touch is now cheaper than the high-end Zune HD, set to be released next week. The 32 GB Zune HD will be $289.99, roughly $10 more expensive than the 32 GB iPod touch, now. The 16 GB iPod touch will still apparently be $30 more than the comparable Zune, but for once, Apple can claim a victory on the high-end price point. Normally, Apple takes down the store to make these changes, but didn’t tonight for whatever reason. Consider it a teaser of what’s to come. CrunchBase Information Apple Microsoft Zune Information provided by CrunchBase Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Hyperlocal Business Directory MerchantCircle Launches Consumer-Facing Features Posted: 09 Sep 2009 03:21 AM PDT Hyperlocal business directory MerchantCircle has been steadily growing as an online network and business directory for merchants in smaller towns to advertise to consumers. MerchantCircle has long targeted its site’s features towards merchants versus catering towards the consumer, as sites like Yelp and CitySearch do. Today, the startup has launched two features to appeal to the consumer side, Neighbors and Answers. MerchantCircle provides small businesses with a web page listing, blogging and email newsletter application, and a local business social network that focuses on connecting local businesses with each other. Since launching in 2006, MerchantCircle has attracted nearly one million small businesses to engage daily on the site in hyperlocal areas of the U.S. With Neighbors and Answers, MechantCircle is trying to appeal to the consumer side by creating conversations between consumers and their local merchants. Answers is a section of MerchantCircle which allows consumers to enter a question to merchants about any topic. So a sample question from a consumer could be “what kind of oil do I put in my truck,” and business owners will give free advice on their area of expertise. The incentive for the business owner is that it’s good advertising. And the consumer can see the profile of who is answering the questions, which includes consumer reviews. MerhcantCircle’s “Neighbors” creates a mini-social network around the site where consumers can "follow" local businesses for information on promotions, coupons and announcements. In order to access this feed, consumers need to create a profile. While MerchantCircle may not be as popular in larger metropolises where Yelp and Citysearch are dominant, the startup has gained traction in small towns where the larger sites don’t have reach. For example, 50 percent of local businesses in Wasilla, Alaska are on MerchantCircle and actively engage with the site. According to ComScore, MerchantCircle isn’t that far behind more widely known business listing and reviews sites like Yelp. In July, MerchantCircle had 7.5 million unique visits; Yelp had 8.6 million unique visits in July. Of course, the MerchantCircle focuses primarily on service busineses like plumbers, landscapers, mechanics etc. whereas CitySearch and Yelp include restaurants, bars, concerts and other listings. MerchantCircle also faces competition from YellowPages.com. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Great Expectations Of An Apple Event Posted: 09 Sep 2009 02:56 AM PDT It’s the night before an Apple event. You know, the time just before the Apple Store being down sends ripples of excitement through the blogosphere. Now’s a time for one last reflection on the finalized rumors laid out in the past several hours. But I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m going to talk about expectations. I’ve been to all but one of the past two years worth of Apple events. And for the several years prior to that, I followed along online on sites like this one, with the rest of you. These past two years there has been a noticeable trend immediately following these events: Disappointment. Now, the degree of disappointment varies, but there always seems to be an overall feeling that people are walking away unsatisfied in some way. The reason for this is obvious: Apple is a victim of its own success. It has spent so many years doing large keynote addresses with “one more thing…” that when it has more recently tried to scale back its events a bit, the public was left expecting the same string of “wows.” And of course, Steve Jobs has taken a major step back recently from these events due to his health situation, but even before he left, the “wows” seemed to be not as plentiful as in years past. I can’t even recall the last time there was a true “one more thing…” (maybe the Apple TV, then called iTV?) and the last major new product that seemed to draw out the “wows” was probably the MacBook Air — which was unveiled in January 2008. But I’m not sure I would even count that as a truly “wow” moment. The talk of that product leaked out in the days leading up to the event, and if anything, the “wows” seemed to come from Jobs’ brilliant display of showmanship by bringing the machine out on the stage in a manilla envelope. And the year before that, we of course had the iPhone. That was really a “wow” moment, but again, there had been no shortage of talk about it, leading up to the unveiling. No matter which way you slice it, that takes away some of the “wow” effect. And let’s remember, both of those two previous examples were during the keynote of Macworld, a large event. Apple is no longer participating in Macworld, and instead is now focusing more on these smaller events, with WWDC likely to be its largest of the year. The biggest cheers at this year’s WWDC were probably for the price of Snow Leopard (a product Apple itself had already previewed the previous year), and the new features of the iPhone (which Apple previously had unveiled at its iPhone 3.0 event). The new iPhone 3GS was the main event, but everyone already knew basically everything about it beforehand. The biggest surprise may have been the $99 iPhone. Which again, wasn’t all that surprising. My point is that in this day and age, it’s simply very, very hard for any company, even Apple, to keep new products a secret. And because the blogosphere has grown to the size that it now is, the news of new products penetrate the mass media. Sure, some product rumors are bogus. But anyone who follows this stuff closely enough can pretty accurately guess what is coming when Apple takes the stage. Let’s try it. What are we going to see tomorrow? iPods with cameras, iPod storage increases with price cuts, iTunes 9, and the “Cocktail” albums. There are various sources on all of that stuff (with iTunes 9 probably being the shakiest), and all seem like sure bets, and seem like exactly what we’re going to get. But still, whether we admit it or not, we’re all holding out hope for that “one more thing…” Some want it to be the tablet, some want new Apple TVs, some want products we’ve never even heard of. The likelihood of any of those? Very, very small. I’m no different. I write about my desire for The Beatles on iTunes, and dreams of iTunes going to the cloud. Neither are going to happen tomorrow, but I still hold out hope. And that, in turn, leads to some level of disappointment when the show wraps. And I’m fine with working myself up to be let down, because I know that most of these things we dream about will be a reality in the future (the tablet, The Beatles on iTunes). And I enjoy thinking about the future. But I know that many of you work yourselves up with these huge expectations and then are pissed off when Apple doesn’t meet them. “New iPods, that’s all?” Apple still certainly has the ability to surprise, because Steve Jobs is known to make product unveiling decisions at the last second. But in recent years, we’ve known about all of the products beforehand, even the ones he chooses not to go with. That’s hardly Apple’s fault, they’d have to develop a product with absolutely no outside help in order to truly keep something on lockdown these days. And considering that not even Apple has the capacity to make every single thing it needs internally, that’s going to be very hard to achieve ever again. The bigger picture is that by continually waiting to be surprised at these events, we often overlook some of the subtle and interesting things Apple is doing with its products. That will probably be the case again tomorrow. I’m going to try to remember that, but I probably won’t be able to get some damn Beatles song out of my head. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

US Government To Embrace OpenID, Courtesy Of Google, Yahoo, PayPal Et Al. Posted: 09 Sep 2009 02:23 AM PDT During the video interview with OpenID evangelist Chris Messina I recorded earlier this year at a German conference about the state of OpenID, he expressed his wish that the Obama administration would soon start to embrace the decentralized, single sign-on method as a way for citizens to engage with the U.S. government online. Four months later, it looks like his dreams are becoming reality. Later this morning at the Gov 2.0 Summit, Federal Government CIO Vivek Kundra will talk about data.gov and other governmental transparency initiatives, and will also be making an announcement regarding the launch of a open identity initiative featuring the use of both OpenID and InfoCards in a special pilot program. Make no mistake about it: this has the potential to change the way citizens participate in and communicate with the U.S. government. The OpenID Foundation has recently published a letter from executive director Don Thibeau as well as a fairly detailed white paper (PDF) on the subject of open frameworks for open governments that you might want to read for background. While the ‘Participating Providers in the U.S. Government Pilot Program’ section on the OpenID Foundation’s website hasn’t gone live yet, the Information Card Foundation provides more details about the pilot program on its blog. Google, Yahoo, PayPal, AOL, VeriSign, Citi, Equifax, Acxiom, Privo and Wave Systems will be the ten organizations to act as digital identity providers using OpenID and Information Card technologies in the first pilot programs designed for the American public to engage in open government. Representatives from the companies had met with government IT officials early August to engage in talks about the initiative, which ReadWriteWeb caught wind of at the time. The programs are being conducted by the Center for Information Technology (CIT), National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and related agencies. The participating companies are said to be getting certification under non-discriminatory open trust frameworks developed under collaboration between the OpenID Foundation (OIDF) and the Information Card Foundation (ICF) and reviewed by the federal government. As an example, we have learned that VeriSign – a founding member of the OpenID Foundation – will serve as an identity provider for a pilot program with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services and regarded as one of the world’s foremost medical research centers as well as the Federal focal point for health research. Thanks to this implementation, citizens will be able to more easily provide input on public policy and access their own tax and Social Security records with OpenID: In essence, this initiative will help transform government websites from basic “brochureware” into interactive resources, saving individuals time and increasing their direct involvement in governmental decision making. OpenID and Information Card technologies make such interactive access simple and safe. For example, in the coming months the NIH intends to use OpenID and Information Cards to support a number of services including customized library searches, access to training resources, registration for conferences, and use of medical research wikis, all with strong privacy protections. Dr. Jack Jones, NIH CIO and Acting Director, CIT, notes, “As a world leader in science and research, NIH is pleased to participate in this next step for promoting collaboration among Assurance Level 1 applications. Initially, the NIH Single Sign-on service will accept credentials as part of an “Open For Testing” phase, with full production expected within the next several weeks. At that time, OpenID credentials will join those currently in use from InCommon, the higher education identity management federation, as external credentials trusted by NIH.” Likely, we’ll learn more from Vivek Kundra’s scheduled speech at the Gov 2.0 Summit later today, but one thing is crystal clear: this is a big win for both the OpenID Foundation and the Information Card Foundation. Who would have predicted say, 5 years ago, that you would some day be able to use commercial identities on government websites? Evidently, this raises questions about privacy and security but if these initiatives can garner enough public support, government validation of open identity frameworks could be a boon for the ecosystem of the open, distributed web. Plus, it can make dealing with the government a lot easier for you, too. P.S.: also read Tim O’Reilly’s guest post on Gov 2.0 as a platform. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Woot.com Traffic As An Indicator of National Financial Stability Posted: 09 Sep 2009 01:35 AM PDT When in the course of human events people lose their jobs and their ways to pay for bags of random stuff and close-out smoke detectors, it behooves all good men to approach shopping site Woot.com with trepidation and distrust. The result? A steady decline in traffic from the post-holiday period of 2009 until about May 2009. Now, however, that is changing. If I can draw your attention to this graph, you’ll notice that yes, traffic is going up. Everything is going to be OK. The general trend at Woot has been heading down since 2008 and seems to be rolling back up this summer. Obviously none of this stuff is set in stone and absolutely accurate but it’s fairly clear that Woot is turning around. But what does this mean? Woot is obviously cyclical and is a direct pointer to the pocket change of a certain technical class who may be interested in lasers and walkie-talkies from China that didn’t sell. That said, one would assume said walkie-talkies would be more desirable when you’re in a job than when you’re out of one and/or when you have a little disposable income. So to recap: Woot traffic took a dive in January and is slowly creeping up. This means it is more popular. As it is a shopping site I suspect the folks visiting aren’t like street urchins in some Victorian novel, their noses pressed up against the glass of a sweet shop dreaming of toffees and crumbles. They are actually shopping. In short, while I wouldn’t stake my dissertation on this trend, Woot’s ability to predict a financial rebound should not be dismissed and that trend is going up. Also they’re selling a Bluetooth headset with case right now for $30 clams. Not a bad price. [Thanks, Thomas!] Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Death, Taxes, Broken Twitter Posted: 09 Sep 2009 01:33 AM PDT We’re shocked (shocked!) that yes, Twitter is broken again. Once again, rather than the Fail Whale, it’s been getting the annoyingly bland 503 error on and off all night. And while the service may appear to be up for you, it may be an illusion. Despite the frontend fading in and out of existence, new tweets aren’t being reliably passed through as of right now. And third-party services getting data through the APIs are seeing delays. But while a lot of these Twitter issues are old hat, and far from shocking, today brought about a couple new annoying issue from the service. The winner: Because Twitter is now tracking all outbound links, and having these 503 errors, a huge number of links that would normally have been working today were caught up in the 503 errors, and seemed to be broken. They weren’t, Twitter is. The runner-up: Twitter’s @reply sidebar button was more or less broken the entire day. Sometimes it would work, but more often then not it would just keep on spinning, without serving up any results. Fun times, especially when you’re trying to test Twitter-based services to write up. That new datacenter is supposedly up and running, but for some reason Twitter is not. Let’s see how she does during the Apple keynote tomorrow. [thanks Josh and Wally] Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

The Palm Pixi: A Smaller Pre But Without Wi-Fi Posted: 09 Sep 2009 01:02 AM PDT In a move akin to Herman’s Hermits opening for the Rolling Stones, Palm has decided to announce the new Palm Pixi, a phone akin to the Palm Centro of yore in price point and features, on the very day Apple will eat up the rest of the news cycle. The Pixi is a non-slider with touchscreen and full keyboard. It will cost about $149 with two year contract and rebates on Sprint. You have 8GB of on board storage and it takes 2-megapixel pictures – down from the Pre’s 3-megapixels. There is no Wi-Fi, a dealbreaker for many. The Pixi will be available in multiple “Artist Series” styles and will be available around the holidays. The Pre costs about $199 – cut to $99 for a bit and then raised back up – so a $50 savings isn’t much when it comes to a device without Wi-Fi. I think the average smartphone buyer is looking for a few things in a device – a touchscreen, 3G networking, and, ideally, some alternative form of transfer. This doesn’t have it. That said, it’s a fascinating move by Palm. Either they wanted to bury this news in the Apple event today or they foolishly thought this would overshadow the event. I’m betting on the former. WebOS is a contender but with phones like the Hero and the Tattoo appearing on the horizon and HTC really taking a a hard look at its competitors – and eating them – Palm may be barking up the wrong tree. We’ll have hands on later today. Thin Palm Pixi Phone Puts Fast, Intuitive Communication at Fingertips Palm's Thinnest Phone Yet Expands Palm webOS Line with Customizable Style SUNNYVALE, Calif., Sept. 9, 2009 – Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) today introduced the Palm® Pixi™ phone for faster, more intuitive and personal communication in a compact and customizable design.(1) With the instinctively useable Palm webOS™ platform, strikingly thin design, a visible full keyboard and fashionable personalization options, Palm Pixi lets you express yourself in amazingly useful ways. It's scheduled to be available exclusively from Sprint in time for the holidays. "With Palm webOS, we're creating a new, more intuitive smartphone experience defined by unmatched simplicity and usefulness," said Jon Rubinstein, Palm chairman and chief executive officer. "Palm Pixi brings this unique experience to a broader range of people who want enhanced messaging and social networking in a design that lets them express their personal style." In addition to linking your information from Google™, Facebook and Exchange ActiveSync, Palm Pixi adds Yahoo! and LinkedIn integration to Palm Synergy™ and assembles it all in a single view.(2) You can get your Yahoo! contacts, calendar and IM, and access to your LinkedIn contacts, including job titles. Synergy on Palm Pixi makes messaging easier by showing you all your conversations with the same person in one chat-style thread, so you can start a conversation on AIM Instant Messenger, Google Talk™ or Yahoo! Messenger and continue it by text message later.(3) Complementing the phone's already rich Facebook integration with the contacts, phone, calendar and photo applications, a new Facebook application will be available with Palm Pixi so you can see and comment on all the latest news from your friends, as well as easily update your status. The phone's full QWERTY keyboard puts it all at your fingertips, and the multi-touch screen lets you move back and forth between open applications using natural gestures.(4) The unique removable back cover is rubberized, making it scratch-resistant, slip-resistant and durable. Personalization with Style For those who want to express themselves with some extra style, Palm is introducing the Palm Pixi Artist Series. Designed by some of today's most unique and compelling artists, these numbered, limited-edition back covers let you change designs to suit your mood. You can see the first collection in the series, as well as information about the artists, at www.palm.com/artistseries. Palm will be showcasing the fashionable new Palm Pixi with the Artist Series covers this week at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York (Sept. 10-17). You can also tailor Palm Pixi to your interests with downloadable applications from the Palm Beta App Catalog, including the latest entertainment and social networking applications such as Local Concerts by iLike, and Yelp™.(5) You can use Palm media sync to customize your phone with music, photos and videos from iTunes (Versions 8.1.1-8.2.1)(6), or use the on-device Amazon MP3 store to purchase individual songs or full albums over-the-air.(3) "Palm Pixi continues Sprint's leadership in providing useful and innovative devices on America's most dependable 3G network,"(7) said Dan Hesse, chief executive officer at Sprint. "We are pleased to be the first carrier to bring this device to market and offer both devices in the growing Palm webOS family. Sprint's Everything Data plans, which provide unrestricted access to the Internet, mobile content and applications, and our Ready Now retail experience make for a perfect combination with these new Palm products." The Sprint Mobile Broadband Network reaches more than 271 million people, 18,652 cities and 1,838 airports, and Sprint's networks are now performing at best-ever levels. Customers who purchase Palm Pixi will benefit from Sprint's Ready Now, which the company pioneered to help customers leave the store educated, comfortable and confident about the phones they're taking home. It is like having a free personal trainer that educates you on all your phone can do by setting up all the applications you want to use on the device. Palm Pixi is also the perfect complement to Sprint's Simply EverythingSM plan, which provides unlimited nationwide calling, texting, email, social networking, web browsing, GPS navigation, Sprint TV, streaming music, NFL Mobile Live, NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile and much more for only $99.99 per month. It's a savings of $1,200 over two years versus some comparable competitor plans. Palm Pixi Features High-speed connectivity (EVDO Rev. A) 2.63-inch multi-touch screen with a vibrant 18-bit color 320×400 resolution TFT display Gesture area, which enables simple, intuitive gestures for navigation Exposed QWERTY keyboard for fast messaging Robust messaging support (IM, SMS and MMS capabilities), including Google Talk, AIM and Yahoo! IM High-performance, desktop-class web browser Integrated GPS(8) Multimedia options, including pictures, video playback and music, and featuring a 2-megapixel fixed-focus camera with LED flash, and a standard 3.5mm headset jack Email, including Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) (for access to corporate Microsoft Exchange servers), as well as personal email support (Google push, Yahoo! push, POP3, IMAP)(9) Bluetooth® 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support 8GB of internal user storage (~7GB user available)(10) USB mass storage mode MicroUSB connector with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed The first handset to launch with Qualcomm's high-performance MSM7627™ chipset Proximity sensor, which automatically disables the touch screen and turns off the display whenever you put the phone up to your ear Light sensor, which dims the display if the ambient light is dark, such as at night or in a movie theater, to reduce power usage Accelerometer, which automatically orients web pages and photos to your perspective Ringer switch, which easily silences the device with one touch Removable, rechargeable 1150 mAh battery Dimensions: 55mm (W) x 111mm (L) x 10.85mm (D) [2.17 in. (W) x 4.37 in. (L) x 0.43 in. (D)] Weight: 99.5 grams (3.51 ounces) Sprint services, including Sprint TV® and Sprint Radio, Sprint Navigation, Sprint's exclusive NFL Mobile Live and NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile Live Availability and Pricing The Palm Pixi phone is scheduled to be available from Sprint in time for the holidays. Pricing for the phone, as well as the limited-edition Palm Pixi Artist Series covers, will be announced closer to availability. Customers who would like to register to receive additional information about Palm Pixi and be notified when it's available can register at www.palm.com/pixi. In addition, effective today the Palm Pre™ phone from Sprint is available for $149.99 with a two-year service agreement and after a $150 instant rebate and $100 mail-in rebate. You can find this great pricing at Sprint stores, on the web (www.sprint.com) and by calling Sprint's telesales group (1-800-SPRINT1). With the new Palm Pixi phone, and Palm Pre at a lower price, Palm and Sprint are bringing greater choice of Palm webOS phones to a larger audience. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

TweetMixx Gets A Last Minute Stir As It Readies For Public Consumption Posted: 09 Sep 2009 12:53 AM PDT Back in July, we wrote about TweetMixx, the new service from social voting site Mixx that allows you find relevant links on Twitter. Starting tomorrow, the service will be opened up to the public. And in anticipation of that, the service got a last-minute revamp this weekend to make sure it’s ready.The results are good, but there’s still a question of if TweetMixx can take off in an increasingly crowded field. As we noted previously, once you log-in with your Twitter credentials via OAuth, the service scans the tweets of the people you follow for links. Rather than trying to make you decipher a long URL or worse, a short URL, to know what the content is, TweetMixx pulls out the title, to let you know what you’re going to click on in plain English (or whatever language the link is in). You can also easily retweet any item or see that link’s details on Mixx.com in this main TweetMixx stream. On top of showing off the links from your friends, you can also view all the tweets (including those without links), just as you would on Twitter.com. And you can update your status from TweetMixx. As a straight-up Twitter client, it’s not a bad one, as it’s fast, and the plain-English link idea is a pretty nice one. There’s also an area to basically saved filtered searches for links you may be particularly interested in. Saved filtered searches are nothing new for Twitter clients, but the link angle is again, a nice one. The problem will be getting people to use TweetMixx rather than the current favorite TweetMeme for Twitter link discovery. I think much of what TweetMixx offers is actually more compelling than TweetMeme (the personalized links on top of the popular links section), but TweetMeme controls the all-important retweet button right now across the web, and as such has the mindshare for links on Twitter. And then there’s the wildcard that is gearing up to enter the race: Bit.ly. As the default URL shortener for Twitter, Bit.ly already has a ton of interesting link data that it will apparently soon use for some kind of link discovery site of its own. Still, TweetMixx is definitely worth taking for a spin if you’re particularly interested in links your friends are sharing, or those for particular queries. And the fact that it can be used as a pretty nice looking Twitter client on top of a link aggregator is a bonus. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

TweetDeck Goes Full-Stream With MySpace, More Facebook Hooks, And A User Directory Posted: 09 Sep 2009 12:40 AM PDT TweetDeck, the most popular software client for Twitter, is not just for Twitter anymore. Founder Iain Dodsworth’s ambition is to make TweetDeck more of a generalized stream reader. Last March, he already added limited Facebook functionality. But with the release today of version 0.30, he is finally bringing in the full Facebook stream into TweetDeck, expanding to MySpace updates, and launching a TweetDeck directory of suggested users to follow. Before, all you could do in your Facebook column in TweetDeck was post status updates and read your feed of friends’ updates. Now you can drag and drop photos and videos, add inline comments and likes, and create different groups of friends to follow (all presumably using Facebook’s new Stream API). The threaded comments and drag-and-drop for adding images and videos will be the big crowd-pleasers, and we noted that the default photo sharing app in TweetDeck for new installs has now changed to TwitPic competitor TweetPhoto (review). In addition to Twitter and Facebook, you can now also keep track of your MySpace stream in Tweetdeck. You can update your mood or status, comment on a friend’s profile, or just wade through your MySpace activity stream, complete with photos and videos. Finally, TweetDeck is is taking its suggested user feature and turning it into a Twitter directory. The page is divided into categories such as music, news, writers, tech, and travel, with sub-categories and an expandable list of suggested Twitter users in each. I just hope the TechCrunch version of TweetDeck gets updated soon too. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Google Voice Finally Marries SMS And Email Posted: 08 Sep 2009 11:17 PM PDT A long requested feature of Google Voice was a simple one: forward inbound text messages to email. Google Voice users get voicemails auto-transcribed and emailed to them, but text messages were not. Users can read and respond to them online in addition to their phones in the normal way, but email forwarding wasn’t an option. Tonight that changed. Google Voice users now have the ability to forward inbound text messages to email. And even better, you can reply from email as well. There are third party services (example) that have offered this, but they require users to give these services your Google Voice credentials, which is never a good idea. It’s great that Google launched this feature directly. Since they seem to be taking requests, here’s my next one: launch an API. I can’t wait to see what developers come up with, and I’d love to use those non-Google services in a secure way without giving them my Google Voice credentials. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

JibJab Helps You (And A Friend) Bust A Move With Soul Train Partnership Posted: 08 Sep 2009 10:54 PM PDT The folks at JibJab continue to pump out some of the funniest customized videos on the web. Last month they forged a deal with master parody maker Weird Al to bring custom versions of the song writer’s music video to the site. And today they’re announcing a partnership with Soul Train, the long-running music TV program that featured countless artists from genres including R&B, soul, and hip hop over its 35 years on the air. You’ll now be able to stick yourself (or your friends) in the 70’s-era dance video below and watch the hilarious results. JibJab has been making similar videos for quite a while, and has built up an impressive repertoire of licensed content including videos from Snoop Dogg and High School Musical. Cofounder Gregg Spiridellis says that the site’s recent implementation of Facebook Connect, which lets users pull photos from the social network and share these customized videos with friends, has led to video virality tripling compared to normal sharing over Email. Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today! Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Want California Data In Your Sex Offender App? There’s A Lawyer For That. Posted: 08 Sep 2009 09:41 PM PDT If you haven’t been following the whole story of Offender Locator, the iPhone app for locating sexual predators around you based on location, let me quickly run it down. ThinAir Wireless released the app, and it immediately became very popular, a top 10 paid app. Then it vanished from the App Store. The issue that Apple apparently had with it, was something we mentioned in our initial post on it after several commenters had, the legality of selling data about sex offenders. Specifically, the issue was the selling of this data in California, so ThinAir removed the California data from the paid version of the app (it’s still available on the free version), and Apple let it back in the store. But ThinAir wasn’t sure that it had to actually do that, so it contacted a privacy lawyer. His conclusion: "I know of no law in California which states that criminal information made public by the state of California that is compiled into a database cannot be sold to the public for profit." ThinAir Wireless has submitted an 11 page letter of opinion to Apple written by the attorney on the topic. Included in it are many comments from our original post, including this hilarious one. We’ve embedded the entire document below. To be clear: This is just an opinion letter at this point, there is no threat of a lawsuit. But it has now been over a week since ThinAir submitted the letter to Apple and it has yet to hear a response. Meanwhile, Offender Locator remains for sale in the App Store [iTunes link], minus the California data. Obviously, it’s ThinAir’s opinion that it should be allowed to reinstate that data, and clearly the application is hampered without it. While ThinAir seems to believe our post on the matter (and specifically the comments about it) forced Apple’s hand in pulling down the app, several other outlets covered this angle as well, and we’d have to believe that Apple would have its own legal team review such an action before it took any. Still, we continue to watch this story with interest — particularly if an iPhone app and the comments on this blog help to set some kind of legal precedent. Predator Opinion Letter – Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Everything You Need To Know About Salesforce’s Service Cloud 2 Posted: 08 Sep 2009 08:53 PM PDT In Salesforce.com’s most recent earnings call, Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff strongly emphasized that the Service Cloud, which was launched in January, was one of the fastest growing segments of the company’s business. A customer service SaaS application, the Service Cloud has quickly accumulated 8,000 customers and has gained a 55 percent market share in the customer service platform arena, according to Salesforce. Today, Salesforce is announcing a significant upgrade to its product, dubbed the “Service Cloud 2,” adding additional functionality in three areas of the product. The basic idea behind the Service Cloud is to capture crowdsourced pools of knowledge floating across the internet and use them for commercial customer service, potentially replacing traditional on-premise contact center technologies which are disconnected from on-demand knowledge that can be found in the cloud. Here are the new innovations that Salesforce has packaged in Service Cloud 2: Salesforce Knowledge: Powered by technology Salesforce acquired through Instranet, Salesforce will offer clients a knowledge base platform, which will allow customer service agents to quickly tap into a SaaS knowledge database. Built on top of the Force.com platform, Salesforce will provide businesses with the technology to organize customer service information into organized repository, making it easy for reps to quickly find the right answer for an inquiry. Google search, which Salesforce says is a important resource for customer service reps, will be integrated and easily accessible in the platform. Salesforce says that businesses can easily deploy changes into the knowledge base and extend the platform to mobile devices and other websites. The knowledge base is price at $50 per user per month and will be available on the Service Cloud 2 in the fourth quarter of 2009. Salesforce Answers: From the its initial launch, the Service Cloud has leveraged crowdsourcing to incorporate knowledge into the platform, but with this new release, Salesforce is helping businesses looking to the web for answers. Online forums and social networks, like Facebook, hold a vast amount of knowledge from consumers. Salesforce Answers will create a customizable website that will facilitate question and answer conversations and will filter the knowledge created on Salesforce Answers directly into the Service Cloud’s knowledge base, ensuring that customers, agents and partners will all have access to the best knowledge available. Answers will also allow companies to set up a Salesforce Answers community directly on a Facebook company fan page, that will import knowledge into the Service Cloud. For example, on Dell’s Facebook Fan page, questions and answers answered by the Facebook community will be imported into the Answer base in the Service Cloud. Salesforce Answers is will available in the first half of 2011. Salesforce for Twitter: Salesforce was one of the first CRMs to integrate with and leverage Twitter back in March but has added to this functionality in the Service Cloud. Similar to the feature added earlier this year, users will be able to search Twitter in a real-time stream, will be able to monitor and track particular conversations in Twitter around a search term. And users can Tweet directly from the Service Cloud. The Service Cloud will now let businesses create a Twitter handle for customers to directly Tweet their customer service issues to. When a customer complains to the handle on Twitter, a customer service case is automatically created in the Service Cloud, letting the representative respond to the customer’s questions in a timely manner, linking back to the Knowledge Base. Salesforce for Twitter is available today for free on the Force.com AppExchange. Leveraging the cloud when it comes to customer service is a powerful way of integrating the social web with the enterprise space, as we’ve written in the past. Salesforce.com and Benioff have been at the helm of this movement and today’s upgrade to the Service Cloud represents the company’s continued innovative strategies that seem to deliver real value to enterprise customers. Salesforce’s Vice President of Product Marketing Kraig Swensrud told me today that the reason Salesforce delivered a new version of the Service Cloud so quickly was primarily in response to customer demand. Basically, enterprise clients saw the increased trend of customers having conversations about products and service on social channels and Salesforce saw an opportunity to help companies figure out how to tap into this arena. Salesforce currently has fairly big-name customers who are using the service cloud, including Starbucks, Comcast and Dell. But Salesforce isn’t forgetting about the little guy; the company recently launched a lightweight contact manager targeted towards small businesses. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Pioneers Of The (Not So) Inevitable May Have New Legs For Songbird Posted: 08 Sep 2009 08:49 PM PDT Pioneers of the Inevitable, the company behind the open source Songbird music player, has had a tough year. Founding CEO Rob Lord left the company earlier this year after burning through $8 million in venture capital from Sequoia Capital and Atlas Ventures. “We were left without a game plan,” said one person close to the company to me confidentially. The company has struggled through, facing what all startups face when they run out of money – shut down or raise new money at unfavorable terms if they can get it. New CEO Jerrell Jimerson has managed to scrape together a new round of financing, we’ve confirmed. Atlas Ventures is participating, but Sequoia Capital has backed out. The new round also recapitalizes the company – it will wash out old investors and drop the valuation substantially. That means Lord, who remains a board member, will lose most of his equity in the company. Songbird may have new legs, though. Another source tells us the company has a deal with Phillips to have Songbird included in 5 million Phillips music players. There’s a chance for Songbird to become a platform for Apple competitors to work from, much like Android provides Apple competitors an easy way to compete in the phone market. Will it work? Investors seem to be interested enough to put more money behind the effort. And the company now, at least, has a game plan. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Wikia Finds A Small Following And Some Profits Posted: 08 Sep 2009 08:38 PM PDT Are normal people finally starting to warm to wikis as publishing tools? Wikia, which hosts 50,000 enthusiast sites on the same wiki software as Wikipedia, is claiming profitability of sorts on strong growth. Over the past six months, Wikia sites (which also includes Wikianswers) have increased unique visitors 76 percent in the U.S. to 6.5 million in July, 14.2 million worldwide (comScore). The orange line in the chart above is just Wikia.com, which had 5.9 million visitors in July, and the blue line is all Wikia sites combined. The company deadpooled its Wikia Search product last March. By organizing each wiki into a niche communities of gamers, sports fans, movie buffs, and so forth, Wikia has been able to sell more targeted advertising into each niche. With the recent growth, Wikia now claims to be profitable—not ina strict GAAP-accounting sense, but in that revenues from ad sales are “significantly higher than the cost of operations in total,” says Wikia CEO Gil Penchina. Wikis need a critical mass of repeat contributors before they become useful. So far, Wikia’s growth has been a slow burn, and certainly pales in comparison with the original Wikipedia. But if the growth of the last six months continue, it may just now be coming into its own. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

New Facebook iPhone App Brings New Privacy Bugs With It Posted: 08 Sep 2009 08:30 PM PDT Privacy bugs at Facebook are nothing new, but that doesn’t make them any easier to stomach. Last week we caught wind of a new one that was relatively benign, but could have been a field day for mischief makers and spammers. Don’t worry, it didn’t give anyone access to your personal information — but it did let you post to the Wall of any Facebook Page you wanted, which can’t be welcome news to the major brands on Facebook, or politicians who go to great lengths to maintain a pristine public image. We spoke with Facebook about the problem last week and held this post until it issued a fix this evening. This latest bug stemmed from Facebook’s impressive new iPhone app, which was released just over a week ago. The new app reproduces much of the functionality found on the Facebook homepage, including the ability to browse through News Feeds and Facebook Pages, and to post to these feeds. Unfortunately, the app failed to pay attention to some of the privacy settings involved with these actions. On Facebook, Page administrators are given control over who can post to their walls — if you want to keep your page clean and display only your updates, you can block users from posting their comments. Alternatively, you can let users comment into an area that’s “Just for fans”, or you can show both fan comments and the Page’s updates in the same feed. Most brands use the first or second option, so that new visitors to their Pages only see content that they control by default (e.g. shared links and status updates). The iPhone application ignored these settings, allowing you to post to a Page even if it was only supposed to be displaying posts from the Page Administrator. So, for example, you could visit President Obama’s Page, which understandably doesn’t allow for any comments, and write whatever you wanted to his feed. Granted, this wouldn’t get syndicated out to other users like his updates would, but anyone who visited Facebook.com/BarackObama would see your message nestled between President Obama’s shared links. Of course, this is hardly the first such bug to pop up — over the last few years we’ve seen a number of exploits that let users access data they were not supposed to be able to see. In fact, this iPhone app has had previous problems: soon after release, users discovered that the application was ignoring the privacy settings on their status updates, which meant friends who were supposed to have been blocked from seeing updates were seeing them anyway. This was quickly resolved by a server-side fix, but it’s scary that it could happen in the first place. Given the frequency of these bugs, it’s clear that Facebook’s security and privacy settings are by no means rock solid and it seems only a matter of time before we see a more serious breach. Thanks to Seve Salazar for the tip. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Grammar Gaffe At Google Apps For Students Posted: 08 Sep 2009 07:40 PM PDT We can’t verify that this is real, but reader Auston Bunsen sends in a screenshot showing a fairly funny grammatical error at Google, given that they are aiming their Google Apps product at students when they make the gaffe. “More then 5 million students have already gone Google” says the page, which is promoting Google Apps for students. The page is hosted here, and has been updated with the grammatically correct “than” to replace the “then.” Or else Bunsen just photoshopped the whole thing. Either way, we think it’s pretty funny. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Facebook On Android: Not Much To Review, But We Do It Anyway Posted: 08 Sep 2009 05:09 PM PDT The much anticipated Facebook application for Android phones quietly launched this morning. Our review, including a video, are below. This is an “official” Facebook app, the company tells us, even though the page says “This application was not developed by Facebook.” That’s because, as we previously reported, Google has actually built this themselves – obviously having a Facebook application was strategically important to them. The application is, to put it magnanimously, “feature light.” There is no messaging at all, just the news stream, the ability to post status updates, and the ability to take/upload photos to Facebook. Most of the cool stuff iPhone users have with their 3.0 app just aren’t available for Android yet. One thing it does well, though – it’s fast. When I was using an iPhone I always just went to Facebook via the browser because the app was way too slow to be usable. The Android app is brisk, and whisks you through the three or four functions quickly and without much of a hitch. Another nice feature are notifications of new events – since Android apps can run in the background you’ll optionally see this stuff even when you aren’t actively using the app. I haven’t seen any bugs yet, although some commenters on the Facebook page are saying otherwise. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Did Yoko Ono And Sky News Just Ruin Apple’s Beatles Surprise? Posted: 08 Sep 2009 03:02 PM PDT It’s the announcement Steve Jobs has been waiting to make for years: that one of his favorite bands, and perhaps the greatest of all time, will finally be available on the music store that he created. Now he may have just had his thunder stolen. Two hours ago, Sky News reported that the Fab Four are finally coming to iTunes, attributing the news to John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono, who is in charge of managing the music legend’s estate. The story kicked off with the headline: “The whole of the Beatles back catalogue will be made available to buy on iTunes, Yoko Ono has told Sky News.” But almost immediately after publishing the story Sky News killed it, leaving nothing but a blank page in its wake. Google News had a cache of it for a brief time, but that too has apparently disappeared in record time. 9to5mac spotted the article and reached Sky News for more information, only to be told that the news organization was unable to comment. At this point there are two possibilities: Sky either made a major blunder and posted something that was untrue, or Apple has unleashed its hounds on the news network. My guess is the latter. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that The Beatles on iTunes will be announced tomorrow (the Sky report, or what’s left of it, doesn’t make a release date clear). In fact, a report in the Financial Times today quotes EMI global catalog president Ernesto Schmitt as explicitly ruling out a 9/9/09 release, stating, “Conversations between Apple and EMI are ongoing and we look forward to the day when we can make the music available digitally. But it's not tomorrow.” Another interesting point from the FT article: Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison want to sell the Beatles catalog on iTunes, but EMI has objected because of concerns over piracy, of all things (according to McCartney, EMI is worried about being held liable if any tracks leak to the web). Of course, the only way to obtain digital versions of The Beatles catalog online at this point is through piracy. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

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