The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- HipLogic Rolls Out Downloadable Version Of Smartphone Interface For Mass Market Phones
- Come March 30, eBay Listing Fees Will Be Gone Or Lower For Some Sellers
- Collecta Launches Customizable Widgets To Spread Realtime Goodness Across The Web
- Calling All Entrepreneurs: California Needs You
- Google Voice Does An End Run Around Apple And Shows Up In The iPhone’s Browser (Screenshots)
- HP Shows Off Its Slate Computer While Revealing A Key Disappointing Detail (Windows)
- Android Apps Are Priced Higher in Europe Than In The U.S. (Report)
- Media Markt’s iPad Confirming Tweet Turns Out To Be Bogus
- Is Property Going Social In The UK?
- Have Questions For Obama? YouTube’s Got You Covered
- Google Celebrates Kuwait’s National Day A Month Early (Updated)
- Facebook Largest Social Network, Twitter Fastest-Growing On The Mobile Web
- TechCrunch Hacked
- Is This The Apple Tablet? (Pretty Pictures)
- Cloudkick Rolls Out Freemium Model For Server Management System
- The Apple Tablet May Come With A Barnes & Noble Bookstore
- MySpace Grew By 7 Percent Last Month, But Was Imeem’s Loss Their Only Gain?
- I Surrender, Comcast
- Apple Execs Downright Giddy About The Tablet (For Them Anyway)
- Jobs On Q1 2010 Results: Apple Now A $50+ Billion Company — Major New Product This Week
- HipChat Takes On Campfire And Yammer As It Launches To The Public
- The First Apple Tablet Commercial? No Way.
- Review: Seagate’s USB 3.0 BlackArmor PS110 Portable Hard Drive Kit
- Platform Wars: Twitter’s Chirp Conference Will Take Place A Week Before Facebook’s f8
- Factery Labs Launches Fact-Based Search Engine
| HipLogic Rolls Out Downloadable Version Of Smartphone Interface For Mass Market Phones Posted: 26 Jan 2010 08:50 AM PST
Mobile application platform HipLogic is rolling out a consumer version of its smartphone interface for non-smartphones. HipLogic Live is a free downloadable application will deliver content—including Facebook, Twitter, CBS news, CBS sports, and weather—to any Windows Mobile or Symbian device. Founded by three veterans from Sun Microsystems, HipLogic brings sophisticated applications to the simplest cell phones by keeping all the complexity in the network. In essence, HipLogic is trying to bring the quick, easy interface of a BlackBerry to more simple, lightweight phones that are available for the mass market. Consumers can toggle between the original mobile operating system and an always-on smartphone-like interface for instant access to a collection of apps. HipLogic Live features a variety of apps, widgets, realtime notifications (Facebook updates and Twitter), and a search bar. The interface and applications are not as sleek and powerful as those of the iPhone and Android, but draws more similarities to the apps and OS of BlackBerry devices. Behind the curtains, HipLogic's application platform features a lightweight, JavaScript virtual machine connected to the cloud and aggregates info from network operators and the web to create mash-ups on mobile devices. While the consumer offering is the first step towards gaining a loyal userbase, HioLogic will need to partner with retailers and phone developers in the near future to include the application within mobile devices. Formerly known has Numobiq, HipLogic has raised $11.5 in funding, recently adding $7 million to its coffers.
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| Come March 30, eBay Listing Fees Will Be Gone Or Lower For Some Sellers Posted: 26 Jan 2010 07:43 AM PST
The e-commerce giant says the ’success-based’ pricing is similar to changes implemented by eBay in Europe, changes that have self-reportedly driven strong growth for sellers in markets such as the U.K. and Germany. Beginning March 30, eBay will offer two pricing packages in the United States: "eBay Everyday" rates Auction-style listings with a start price of 99 cents or less will be free (with no insertion fees for up to 100 listings per month). When an item sells, the seller will pay a flat final value fee of 9 percent of the sale price – and never more than $50. If an item doesn't sell, the seller pays nothing. eBay says these listings are typically are the ideal format for people who sell on the site occasionally. "eBay Stores" subscription rates For large volume sellers, eBay is to introduce insertion fees as low as 3 cents per listing for 30 days—a 90 percent reduction over current rates according to the company. Subscription rates offer various pricing options, depending on the size of a seller's business. With the new pricing, a seller with 250 listings per month would save $80 or $960 a year in insertion fees, eBay says. With these changes, eBay's current store inventory format will be discontinued and will no longer have separate search functionality from core fixed-price listings. With the new eBay Stores rate package, all fixed priced inventory on eBay will have exposure through eBay's main search functionality. Sellers who want to determine which pricing option will work best for their listings when the changes take place in March can use eBay's Fee Illustrator: Along with the pricing changes, eBay announced that, effective today, it is expanding to all buyers its eBay Buyer Protection, which the company has been piloting over the past year. The program was first introduced in October 2009 and helps buyers identify sellers who consistently provide great service (as rated by other buyers). Through the program, buyers will have access to customer support specialists seven days a week, as well as a money-back offer for most purchases should a problem arise and the seller is unable to resolve the issue. eBay Buyer Protection covers items paid with PayPal or any other approved payment method.
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| Collecta Launches Customizable Widgets To Spread Realtime Goodness Across The Web Posted: 26 Jan 2010 07:25 AM PST
Users can easily create a widget by entering the desired search terms in Collecta’s widget creator. You can then grab the code and embed it on any site or blog. The widget will provide realtime streaming content on the search terms, collecting content from a network of more than 10 million social media and news sites, including Twitter, WordPress, Flickr, The Associated Press, CNN, Reuters, and more. Collecta also allows users to customize the header, control the scroll rate, and link to an external style sheet to integrate the widget with their website’s look and feel. Collecta is already using its widget technology to power realtime results for MySpace’s breaking news page focused on Haiti. MySpace and Collecta recently partnered to launch a realtime search platform using the MySpace real-time stream API to indexes the collection of public comments, photos, links, and videos that are shared throughout the social network. The widget offering is compelling and should certainly help the search engine extend the reach of its technology and results. Of course, some of the results aren’t necessarily relevant but that seems to be the only downside. Twitter also offers its own realtime search widget, that continuously updates with new results from the query you set. Collecta.com's standalone search engine aggregates content from Twitter,MySpace, news sites, blogs and more and lets you share the content on Facebook, Stumbleopen, Delicious and other social media sites. Launched last June, Collecta has raised $1.85 million in funding from True Ventures and Campbell were the investors. The company was co-founded by Jack Moffitt, Brian Zisk, and Patrick Mahoney.
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| Calling All Entrepreneurs: California Needs You Posted: 26 Jan 2010 07:01 AM PST
In my last post, I discussed how the gap between the web and enterprise-computing worlds has narrowed. Some of the Valley's developers are now building web-based systems that make old-world transaction processing seem like child's play. After all, Twitter processes more transactions per day (in the form of messages) than the systems of many large corporations process in a month. Applications that would take years to design and develop can now be built in weeks. I called on Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to rescue the California government—to help rebuild its legacy systems. I also went out on a limb and "bet" that an unemployment check-processing system that California State had budgeted $50 million to upgrade could be rebuilt from scratch for a tenth of the cost, in a fraction of the time. To my surprise, Joanne Moretti, Senior Vice President of Product Marketing at software giant Computer Associates, posted comments saying I was naïve and clueless. Her demand: “don't kick something you know absolutely squat about”. It was clear that my post had angered her. But what I think was behind these comments was the need for her to defend her aging product stream. She claimed that CICS/IMS (tele-processing monitors developed in the '60s), "are two of the fastest transaction engines in the world, and could very well be valuable pieces of a well designed well integrated environment". (Joanne, no hard feelings, but I don't think that you're going to sell any CICS/IMS systems in the Valley. And please ask your CEO, John Swainson, about my background. During his days at IBM, he licensed my technology to provide the backbone for IBM’s large-scale client–server systems-development tools). But on the flip side, two entrepreneurs agreed to step up to the challenge. Jeff Whitehead, CEO of Real Time Matrix (who I had mentioned in my post), wrote:
Disclosure: Jeff worked at both of my startups. He has a reputation for delivering more than he promises. So I take his words very seriously. Another entrepreneur who agreed to take the challenge is Scott Broomfield, CEO of Veeple, which provides cloud-based online video support. Here is part of what he wrote:
Scott is rightfully nervous about government bureaucracy. But he and his CTO, Craig Sproule, too have a solid track record of building large-scale enterprise systems. I believe they too can deliver what they promise. To be clear, we're talking about a system that processes payments for fewer than 1 million individuals. One reader wrote that he believes he could run the entire system from his laptop (and fit the database on a 32GB flash drive). I'm sure the system is much more complex than this. But I have little doubt that a new, stand-alone system could be developed for less than $5 million. I suspect that Jeff and Scott see this as a good alternative to raising venture capital and that that's why they're throwing their hat in the ring. Does anyone else want to bid? Do I hear $4 million? …. I also wanted to reach out to California State CIO, Teri Takai, and CTO, P.K. Agarwal. Teri/P.K.: I know you're doing your best to modernize the legacy you inherited and that you have made great progress. How can we balance the scales so that entrepreneurs like Jeff and Scott have a chance to take on the giant state contractors who win all the bids and reap the fortunes? I think you’ll agree that we can save taxpayers many hundreds of millions of dollars and greatly improve public services if we get this one right. Photo credit: Flickr/Matthew Smith. Editor's note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.
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| Google Voice Does An End Run Around Apple And Shows Up In The iPhone’s Browser (Screenshots) Posted: 26 Jan 2010 06:00 AM PST
Remember the dustup last summer over Apple’s rejection of the Google Voice app for the iPhone? Everyone was pointing fingers and even the FCC got involved. Michael was so upset that he quit the iPhone rather than give up his Google Voice. Well, now he can come back because Google Voice is finally on the iPhone via its browser, and Apple can’t really do anything about it.. Google Voice will become available today for both the iPhone and Palm Pre/Pixi via a new mobile Website which will go live later today at http://m.google.com/voice. The new Google Voice mobile site shows your inbox with transcribed calls, which you can play from the browser. You can also send SMS messages or dial from the browser. The application ends up making a local call through your cell phone to Google Voice, which then routes your call through its own lines. When someone gets the call, they see your Google Voice number instead of your AT&T number. And when you get a voicemail, a notification even pops up on your iPhone with the transcribed message (through SMS). It is built on HTML5 with most of the functionality of the original iPhone app, except that it cannot access the local contact list in your iPhone’s address book. It lets you manage a separate Google Voice contact list which is kept in the cloud instead. Google Voice voice routes your calls through its servers and acts as a new hub through which you can manage calls and forward them to various phones. You can also manage your settings and various phone numbers. The HTML5 makes it very fast, allows for local caching of data, and supports the voice tags necessary to play the audio voicemails through the browser. Mobile apps like Google Voice really show what can be done in the browser and point to an alternative way to build sophisticated apps for the iPhone without going through the gatekeepers in Cupertino. VoiceCentral, one of the third-party Google Voice apps that was also pulled from the App store, created a similar browser-based version of Google Voice for the iPhone. Both of these apps went the browser route because they didn’t have any other choice, but you can hardly tell them apart from regular apps. Once mobile phones allow access to deeper phone functions such as the local contact list from the browser, there will be even less reason to create a device specific app. The Web, after all, supports many different platforms. With a few tweaks to the UI, the mobile Google Voice site also works on Palm phones.
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| HP Shows Off Its Slate Computer While Revealing A Key Disappointing Detail (Windows) Posted: 26 Jan 2010 05:59 AM PST  Apple isn't the only company with tablets. HP and Dell showed off its slate concepts at CES '10, but their demo's left us with so many questions. HP's CTO Phil McKinney at least reveals a bit more about his company's offering. But hopefully he's out of the loop a bit and HP actually has more planned for the device. Otherwise, the HP Slate will be about as successful as the HP TouchSmart iMac clones. Phil gives the background about the Slate's development at HP. He explains that the company has been working on the unit for about five years and it started out as an ereadering device. But then as many things do, it evolved into what he's showing off in the video. But this slate is plagued by the same fundamental flaw as the vast majority of the current tablets: Windows. Phil states that the device will run plain-jane Windows 7. That's a problem because even Windows 7 with its added touchscreen capabilities is not suited for extended tablet use without a stylus and Apple/Palm/RIM/HTC has proven to the world that we don't need styluses. (stylii?)
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| Android Apps Are Priced Higher in Europe Than In The U.S. (Report) Posted: 26 Jan 2010 05:58 AM PST
Distimo found that publishers in the Euro zone (Austria, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands and Spain) tend to price their applications higher than those in the United Kingdom, the U.S. and Japan. The average price of an Android app published by a developer in Europe is $4.42, which is 49% higher than publishers located in the United States ($2.96). For comparison, publishers in Japan price apps $2.28 on average, while the UK comes out at an average price of $3.31.
In Android Market, application prices are denoted in the publisher’s home currency, which is how Distimo is able to look at the differences in pricing per region. Looking at the physical location of publishers of paid applications, Distimo found that 65% is in the United States, and 12% in the United Kingdom. This makes sense of course, because those are the countries Android Market arrived first. The Euro zone accounts for 20% of publishers, and Japan for a mere 3%.
Distimo doesn’t only track Android Market, and in fact has just broadened its analytics services to include Windows Mobile Marketplace and Nokia Ovi Store next to Android Market, BlackBerry App World and the Apple App Store. Unsurprisingly, Distimo found that applications for BlackBerry and Windows Mobile are generally priced higher. This is likely the result of the fact that more enterprise applications make their way to those devices, and its owner are more keen on spending money for tools that help them to do their jobs more efficiently. According to Distimo’s report, the average price of applications for Android, iPhone / iPod Touch and in Nokia’s Ovi Store hovers around $3.50. Windows Marketplace for Mobile and BlackBerry App World are clearly more expensive, averaging $6.99 and $8.26, respectively.
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| Media Markt’s iPad Confirming Tweet Turns Out To Be Bogus Posted: 26 Jan 2010 05:00 AM PST
Turns out the Twitter account was indeed a fake. German electronics retailer Media Markt told IT news site Golem (in German) that the Twitter account does not belong to them at all. In fact, the owner (or Twitter, although unlikely at this time of day) removed the account about 20 minutes ago. Looks like the handle was registered again shortly after, however, but the follower count went back to zero and there are not updates posted to the account at the time of this writing. The original tweet leading to the worldwide coverage frenzy (embedded on top) spoke of the Apple iPad going on sale March 1st at a price of 499 Euros with contract with T-Mobile or 899 Euros without. It was deleted about 30 minutes after its original posting, leading many to believe it was in fact a slip-up by Media Markt. No, says the retailer, it wasn’t us. One wonders why a prankster would delete that tweet if he or she was pulling everyone’s leg anyway, but I’m not even going to bother asking myself what happened. Apple’s event takes place Wednesday, January 27th.
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| Is Property Going Social In The UK? Posted: 26 Jan 2010 04:49 AM PST
In particular, Facebook Marketplace is starting to be used by niche poperty agencies like Pimlico Flats, more successfully than the usual online suspects like Craigslist and Gumtree. That latter site has had problems with other aspects of its site like, having to dump dating because of spam and scams. The same problems are plaguing Craigslist in the UK, and this is something that Pimlico Flats picks up on in a blog post on the subject. The ability to verify Facebook users turns out to weed out the scammers. At the same time, although findaproperty and rightmove remain strong, less conventional sites like Globrix, Nestoria, Zoopla (see below) and even niche social networks like Asmallworld are being used.
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| Have Questions For Obama? YouTube’s Got You Covered Posted: 26 Jan 2010 04:27 AM PST
Google is stepping up its game, as it will also give YouTube users the opportunity to ask Obama some follow-up questions in video or text. On Wednesday night at 9 p.m. ET, during the live broadcast of the State of the Union on Citizentube, YouTube will be opening up a special Moderator series for citizens to submit their questions. Evidently, President Obama will not be answering those questions live: the days following the speech, users will be able to submit additional questions and vote on their favorites. Next week, although Google still has to communicate the exact timing, the top-voted questions will be asked to the president in a YouTube interview from the White House, which will also be broadcast live on Citizentube. Read more on the YouTube blog and the White House blog.
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| Google Celebrates Kuwait’s National Day A Month Early (Updated) Posted: 26 Jan 2010 03:28 AM PST
Google is currently putting the spotlight on Kuwait’s National Day, as evidenced by the file name (kuwaitnatlday10-hp.gif) and where clicking the logo takes you (translation). The only problem: Kuwait’s National Day isn’t January 25 or 26, but February 25. Update: the site changed back to normal about 15 minutes after our post went up. To be more specific, the State of Kuwait celebrates its National Day on February 25, marking the creation of country as a nation in 1961. Kuwait celebrates Liberation Day on February 26, marking the liberation of the country after seven months of Iraqi occupation. There’s definitely no public holiday going on the 25th or 26th of January, however, so either they’re going to keep this doodle logo and link up for a month in anticipation of Kuwaiti festivities, or someone got the date wrong. My money’s on the latter. (Thanks for the tip, Michel)
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| Facebook Largest Social Network, Twitter Fastest-Growing On The Mobile Web Posted: 26 Jan 2010 03:07 AM PST  [Norway] Browser maker Opera this morning released their latest State of the Mobile Web report, this time zooming in on the rising trend of social networking on the go. For the first time, Facebook comes out as the most-visited social network on the mobile Web, but Twitter's growth has surged even faster in 2009. According to the report, unique users of Facebook grew more than 600% during 2009, helping the site surpass VKontakte, the Russian social network that was formerly the most popular among Opera Mini users (the mobile browser is quite popular in Russia and Eastern Europe). Twitter saw its usage increase more than any other social network, surging more than 2800% in just one year.
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| Posted: 26 Jan 2010 03:06 AM PST As some people noticed, at approximately 10:30 pm PST on Monday evening the main site in the TechCrunch Network – techcrunch.com – was hacked and redirected. The site was back up briefly at 11:30 pm but shortly went down again. As of 2:00 am, the site is back up and appears to be stable. At this point we’re still gathering information on how the site was compromised, and will update this post with additional information.
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| Is This The Apple Tablet? (Pretty Pictures) Posted: 25 Jan 2010 11:00 PM PST
Who knows if these are real, but these are easily the most legitimate looking pictures I’ve ever seen of the supposed Apple Tablet/iPad/iSlate/iBook/Whatever It Will Be Called. Further, UI designer Dustin Curtis tells us a friend sent him these pictures — and from what we hear, that friend could work at Apple (he wouldn’t confirm that). Or maybe Curtis made these himself and he’s just messing with us. If so, you should hire this guy. Pick them apart in the comments and tell us what’s wrong. At the very least, these are 1000 times better than that video earlier. Update: A lot of people across the Web are offering their image analysis of these shots and throwing doubt on their veracity. For instance, Cole Rise points out that the noise profile of the tablet is different than the laptop in the image, and concludes that it is a “very good fake, but pixels don’t lie.” (See his image, the second one below).
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| Cloudkick Rolls Out Freemium Model For Server Management System Posted: 25 Jan 2010 08:58 PM PST  Cloudkick, a Y Combinator-incubated startup that offers a free server management system to businesses, is rolling out its freemium model and additional features. Cloudkick provides detailed graphs on the health of your servers, and tools to categorize and keep information about what each server is doing. Cloudkick's dashboard allows you to easily add or remove servers from Rackspace Cloud, Amazon EC2, Linode, GoGrid, Slicehost, RimuHosting, and VPS.NET and then monitor an unlimited amount of instances. You can see all the servers in one place, and color-code and label each server. Cloudkick will check whether servers are alive and functioning and then alert you, via email, if servers go down. Cloudkick also provides data on bandwith and other metrics on servers in easy to use graphs and tables, allowing you a visual snapshot of server activity. You can also access servers straight from web and can run commands through your web browser remotely, which is handy when you are trying to manage servers from another computer The new paid features available on Cloudkick include load, CPU, bandwidth, and memory monitoring; advanced performance graphs and diagnostic performance. Cloudkick will continue to offer its original feature set to customers for free with the new advanced features ranging from $99 to $599 per month depending on the number of servers. Cloudkick also offers customized packages for customers with larger or more specific needs. In addition to the monitoring and management tools, Cloudkick also offers a free Provider Directory that lets customers compare information about multiple cloud providers; from pricing plans to different hardware offerings. As we’ve written in the past, Cloudkick is part of the birth of cross-cloud applications and management tools. Its management tools allow businesses to optimize their investment in the cloud; and easily compare pricing between various providers. Currently Cloudkick is has over 3700 registered accounts and is adding more clients daily. With its innovative product and fair pricing, we expect to see big things from this startup.
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| The Apple Tablet May Come With A Barnes & Noble Bookstore Posted: 25 Jan 2010 07:47 PM PST  Of all the rumors swirling around the Apple Tablet expected to be announced on Wednesday, the one most everyone can agree on is that it will be used as a full color electronic reader which will put Amazon’s Kindle to shame. Over the past few weeks, Apple has been negotiating a flurry of last-minute deals directly with book publishers such as HarperCollins and McGraw-Hill. Magazine and newspaper publishers are salivating to get on the device. But one unanswered question so far is whether Apple will add books and magazines to iTunes or create an entirely new e-book store from scratch. We believe there is a good chance there will be a Barnes & Noble bookstore built into the Apple Tablet, either as one of the showcase apps which launches with the device, powering a new book section in iTunes, or integrated directly into the Tablet’s e-reader. The two companies are thought to be working closely together, increasing the likelihood that Barnes & Noble will be part of the announcement on Wednesday. While Apple can run around cutting deals with the larger publishers, a built-in Barnes & Noble bookstore could include up to a million titles in one fell swoop, just like on B&N’s own Nook reader. Barnes & Noble already offers an eReader app for the iPhone (iTunes link) which lets you download and read electronic books on the smaller device. That app could be paving the way for an eReader or book store on the Tablet. Of course, Amazon also has a Kindle app for the iPhone which allows people to buy electronic books from its store. We don’t know whether Apple is also working with Amazon for Wednesday’s launch, although given the recent moves by Amazon to shore up the Kindle in anticipation of Apple’s technicolor onslaught seeing them on stage would be really surprising. Allowing Amazon to create a Kindle app for the Tablet, though, seems more reasonable. After all, Apple wants to sell Tablets. If it doesn’t have to get into the bookstore business to do that, why should it? For Barnes & Noble, however, if it can manage to become the default bookstore on the Tablet, or simply squeeze its app into a preferred slot, it could make real inroads against the Kindle. An Apple Tablet tied to a Barnes & Noble digital bookstore must be Jeff Bezos’ worst nightmare.
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| MySpace Grew By 7 Percent Last Month, But Was Imeem’s Loss Their Only Gain? Posted: 25 Jan 2010 06:29 PM PST
Over the weekend at the MidemNet music event in Cannes, MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta took the stage to talk about the current status of the struggling company. During his keynote interview with Billboard editorial director Bill Werde, Van Natta stated that MySpace was showing an increase in unique visitors for the first time since the middle of last year. In fact, Van Natta said that according to comScore data, MySpace visitors grew by 7 percent between November and December. That may sound like great news for the site, but it may be misleading: many of these new users may have simply been redirected users of Imeem. MySpace completed its acquisition of Imeem on December 8, and the music service was promptly shut down (Imeem was out of money and its music licenses were expiring). As soon as Imeem shut down, MySpace redirected all of its traffic to its own music site. Now, we can’t tell exactly how many users MySpace gained from these redirects, but according to comScore MySpace saw a jump in 4.7 million unique visitors in December, which is about the same as what comScore was measuring for Imeem in previous months (it had 4.6M in October and 4.4M in November). Again, we can’t definitively say how much of MySpace’s growth was due to Imeem, but it’s likely that it represented a substantial portion of it. To be fair, Van Natta and MySpace aren’t exactly out boasting about their improved traffic stats — Van Natta’s comment was in response to a question that was posed to him on stage, and he followed it up by saying, “We don't want to get ahead of ourselves here but it's good that the numbers have stabilized and we hope this will continue”. It’s worth pointing out that while MySpace’s uniques have stabilized after big drops last spring and summer, it’s unclear if the number of page views the site receives has stabilized (see the comScore graph below).
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| Posted: 25 Jan 2010 06:15 PM PST  I'm just going to take it. That's right, Comcast. This is me, waving my white flag. I'm not going to complain to you any more. Why did I even try in the first place? It's like trying to erode Mount Rainier with licks. So from here on out, I'm just going to take it. All the outages, all the fees, all 20 levels of customer service. Who was I kidding, anyway?
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| Apple Execs Downright Giddy About The Tablet (For Them Anyway) Posted: 25 Jan 2010 03:52 PM PST
In Apple’s press release for its strong Q1 2010 earnings, Jobs said the following: “The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we're really excited about.” What’s odd is that not only does Jobs (or anyone at Apple, for that matter) usually make no comments about as-yet unannounced products, but why would he do so in a release about the previous quarter’s earnings — which have absolutely nothing to do with the tablet? He simply had no reason that he had to make that statement. I can only interpret that as he’s just that excited about what he’s going to unveil on Wednesday. I’ve talked before of the importance of enthusiasm in any product, particularly with regard to Steve Jobs. Clearly, he has it again, and maybe more so than ever before — and that’s saying something. Perhaps even stranger is what was said during Apple’s earnings call today. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer fielded a question about unannounced products affecting Apple revenues next quarter, and quickly jumped to his own conclusion. “I think you’re alluding to our event on Wednesday.” While he said Apple had nothing to share on it today beyond “stay tuned,” the fact that he’s the one who brought up the Wednesday event as it relates to a new products also seems to signal his own excitement about it. Again, usually Apple completely stonewalls any questions related to these types of things. And then there was Apple’s number 2, COO Tim Cook. During the call, he fielded a question more directly about a new product unveiling saying, “I wouldn't want to take away your joy of surprise on Wednesday when you see our latest creation." It’s not that Apple is saying anything hugely revealing about the new product due on Wednesday — it’s that they’re saying anything at all. At times, Apple is a company that tries to dampen its own often-frenzied hype by way of strategic press leaks. But this time, they’re actually feeding it. I just can’t imagine they would do that unless the product really is that good.
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| Jobs On Q1 2010 Results: Apple Now A $50+ Billion Company — Major New Product This Week Posted: 25 Jan 2010 01:43 PM PST
and
I think we all know what that means. In terms of the financials for the quarter itself, Apple continued strong momentum in terms of Mac and iPhone sales, while iPod sales continued to slip. The iPhone numbers are the most impressive: 8.7 million iPhones in the quarter, a 100 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter — and up 17.6 percent from the previous quarter. Meanwhile, Apple sold 3.36 million Macs, which was a 33 percent increase over the year-ago period. iPod sales totaled 21 million, which was down 8 percent versus a year ago. Overall, the company posted revenue of $15.68 billion and a net profit of $3.38 billion. That means revenue was up about $4 billion versus a year ago, while profit was up over $1 billion. Gross margin was 40.9 percent, up from 37.9 percent a year ago. Apple also notes that it has gained another $5.8 billion in cash for the quarter, which should push its war chest very close to $40 billion. Also noteworthy is that Apple decided to start adopting the new accounting principles for subscription devices such as the iPhone and Apple TV this quarter. During last quarter’s conference call, Apple noted that it wasn’t sure when it would start doing that, saying that it only had to by the end of the year. But with this new method in place, it “significantly changes” how Apple reports its numbers. Below find my conference call live notes (paraphrased): On the call: Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer, Apple COO Tim Cook, as well as Apple's Treasurer.
Q&A Session
And that’s a wrap.
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| HipChat Takes On Campfire And Yammer As It Launches To The Public Posted: 25 Jan 2010 01:28 PM PST
HipChat looks quite a bit like Campfire, but uses a desktop client based on Adobe AIR, rather than a web-based client (Yammer, which we use extensively for internal communication around the TechCrunch offices, is based on AIR as well). Co-founder Pete Curley says that since launching its private beta, HipChat has had nearly 500 companies sign up who have exchanged over 100,000 messages. He also says that many of the companies to sign up have converted to paying customers. The service is nice looking and easy to get up and running, but it’s still missing a few key features, like mobile applications. Curley says that the HipChat team initially intended to have SMS support and mobile applications developed by the end of the private beta, but that because the product was seeing so much uptake without them, they decided to launch to the public sooner rather than later. He says that HipChat still plans to launch mobile, SMS, and API features in the very near future. New users can try out the software free 30 days, at which point they have to move up to a paid plan. These range from $9 a month for 12 members up to $99 a month for 100 members.
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| The First Apple Tablet Commercial? No Way. Posted: 25 Jan 2010 01:14 PM PST
And really, that should be easy to tell just by watching the video. Does it have somewhat of an Apple look and feel to it? Kind of, but several things don’t feel right. First of all, it’s predicated around the design of the invites that went out for Apple’s event this week, decorated with paint splashes. The likelihood that Apple would use that same concept in a new ad for the device is slim. Technologizer did a good overview of the history of Apple event invites last week, and as you can see, most have nothing to do with product marketing efforts. Sure, a few use the silhouetted people design that are used in iPod commercials, but those were popular before the events. Still, it’s not impossible that Apple would use this design for a tablet commercial, but several other things are still off. The biggest problem is the image shown on the display of the device. Clearly, it’s running a full version of OS X, just as Macs run — but that’s not expected to be the case. In fact, given the rumored processor in the device, it’s unlikely that it could even run a full version of OS X (complete with GarageBand, iPhoto, iTunes and other processor-intensive apps) up to Apple’s standards. Instead, the device is expected to use a new version of the iPhone OS (which is Mac OS-based). And if you look at the image, you’ll see that the dock icons are being magnified as if a mouse is moving over them. That concept likely wouldn’t work at all on a touchscreen tablet because how and why would you run your finger over this area without clicking on any of the icons? And let’s not even get into why an (awful-looking) on-screen keyboard would appear as you were hovering over a dock item. Also problematic: the whole “After 10 years in development…” thing. Is Apple likely to admit just how long it has been working on the tablet? If they do, it will be on stage on Wednesday, not in a commercial. Plus the whole 10 year number is hard to lock down, depending on which reports you believe. Then there is the design of the device in the video. While its overall look does correspond with reports that it will look similar to a first generation iPhone, the likelihood that it will have all those ports on the back seems pretty small. I mean, that would be okay if the device were always docked, but that’s not the point of it, you’re supposed to be able to hold it. And while it could very well have USB ports, would it really have Firewire and ethernet cable ports? And why wouldn’t it use Apple’s newer Mini Display Port? And why is there a black stripe across the back? There are a half dozen other little things that are off too: the typography seems a bit off, the “iPad” name is far from certain, it’s an odd song choice, etc. Oh, and then there’s the fact that on the front of the device, the left hand side of the screen has a black border, while there is no border on the right. Even if this was just a picture of a prototype Apple was using for a teaser commercial, do you think Apple would overlook something like that? No way. So is this the Apple Tablet? No way.
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| Review: Seagate’s USB 3.0 BlackArmor PS110 Portable Hard Drive Kit Posted: 25 Jan 2010 12:22 PM PST  The future is here, everyone. Let's check out the just-announced Seagate BlackArmor PS110 Performance kit. It's Seagate's first USB 3.0 product and it's noice -- where noice is slang for nice, and for the sole fact that it's the first USB 3.0 drive I've tested. I'm a little excited.
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| Platform Wars: Twitter’s Chirp Conference Will Take Place A Week Before Facebook’s f8 Posted: 25 Jan 2010 11:50 AM PST
Day 1 of the Twitter conference will take place at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater. This day will contain the meat of the schedule. Highlighted talking points include OAuth, streaming, geolocation, business strategies, mobile integration, and the product roadmap. Right now, the only highlighted speakers include Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone as well as COO Dick Costolo and Sarver, but you can expect more to be added. Day 2 will see the event move to the Herbst Pavilion in Fort Mason for a 24-hour “Hack Day” for Twitter third-party developers. Naturally, there will also be a big party after the conference with “free beer, food and music all night long.” No word on any performers yet, but you can be sure that much like f8, Twitter will bring in some big names to make their community happy. And they should because it’s going to cost those developers a pretty penny to attend. $469, to be exact. While Facebook hasn’t yet announced the price of f8 2010, in previous years it has been significantly cheaper than $469. In 2008 (its second year) for example, it was $250 to attend, and $150 if you signed up early. But the Twitter conference will also be more exclusive. There are 800 tickets that Twitter will be releasing on a first-come-first-serve basis. And you have to use the API to sign up, which means it will be kept very developer-focused. It’s also worth noting that the costs are higher because Twitter isn’t taking outside sponsors, like Facebook does for f8, I’m told. Today, Twitter is releasing the first 100 tickets — you can sign up here. There is also a way for people on Twitter to anonymously give a ticket to someone else, which Twitter is calling the “scholarship ticket.” As Facebook touts on its f8 2010 preview page, there are over 500,000 applications on the Facebook Platform, and over 300 of those have more than a million users each. Facebook also has a number of applications developers that are making quite a bit of money on their platform, such as Zynga. In fact, the Zynga revenues are so huge that there is no shortage of talk that they could go IPO soon — maybe even before Facebook itself. Twitter has a ways to go before it reaches that level as a platform, but the community of third-party developers is growing rapidly — hence, this conference. Twitter is using Carsonified to produce the event, the group known for putting on events such as the Future of Web Apps. On the Chirp page, there is also a hidden area that teaches you how to make Magical Origami Chirp Birds, if you’re into that sort of thing. Twitter user Peter Boctor has also made a useful Twitter list that is auto-updating with everyone who registers to attend the conference.
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| Factery Labs Launches Fact-Based Search Engine Posted: 25 Jan 2010 10:03 AM PST
The site has a spartan interface that I wouldn’t classify as good looking, but it gets the job done. When you first visit Factery Labs, you’ll see a series of widgets, each presenting facts about the current hottest trends (trends are based on trending topics from Twitter). At the top of the page, you’ll find other topics, including Sports, Entertainment, World, Politics, and Technology. Each of these topics is pre-loaded with a handful of popular queries, like “Apple” and “Tablet” in the case of Tech. Each fact consists of a line or two of information, followed by a link to its source, a ‘more’ button that lets you read the fact in context, and a share button so that you can send it to friends. Of course, the deciding factor in Factery Labs’ success will likely be how well their technology actually works. In my experience, it seems to work decently well, but has some very hit-or-miss results. A query for ‘Avatar’ made it easy to find out how much the film grossed from its initial midnight showings, but didn’t include its overall gross thus far (oddly, this fact was included when an ‘Avatar’ query was run from the site’s Entertainment section). A search for “Super Bowl” correctly returned the teams playing (Saints vs. Colts) , where they’re playing ( Factery Labs clearly still needs a lot of work on its algorithms, but there’s some promise. That said, I still think the service’s real potential lies in integration with Twitter clients and popular link sharing sites. I’m not eager to start using a new search engine, but if this could help me use the sites I’m already visiting more efficiently, I’d be a big fan.
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App store analytics company 
A tweet posted on Twitter account 
I’ve got a feeling something interesting is happening to the way real estate operates online in the UK. Anecqdotal evidence is emerging that social networks like Facebook and less conventional startups are perhaps starting to find the chink in the armour of the traditional property listing market here. 
On Wednesday, U.S. President Barack Obama will deliver his State of the Union speech, which will be broadcast live on YouTube’s 
A TechCrunch reader informs us that 
Yesterday, we noted that multiple sources have heard 
Apple has just 
Earlier today, the French site 
Back in December at Le Web, Twitter Director of Platform Ryan Sarver announced that 
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