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| As Court Prepares Shackles For The Pirate Bay, Other Torrent Sites Are Ready To Replace It Posted: 17 Apr 2009 08:47 AM PDT Despite some early fumbling by the prosecution, a judge in Sweden handed down a guilty verdict today in the case against The Pirate Bay, the popular BitTorrent search site. The four founders, who still seem to think this is a big joke, each face one year of jail time and a $3.6 million fine. The site will continue to function for now as they appeal the decision. Even though the Pirate Bay does nothing more than point to other places on the Web where people can find BitTorrent files, including both legal and illegal downloads of music, movies, and other content, the court ruled that the Pirate Bay assisted in wholesale copyright infringement. Nobody should really be surprised by this ruling. In the past, companies such as Napster and Grokster got into trouble in U.S. courts for similar types of “vicarious infringement” and “inducement” to infringe. The music industry still spends an inordinate amount of money on legal fees (although it has come down from the $140 million it used to spend annually, not counting whatever it cost the RIAA to go after those 35,000 file-sharers before they decided that was not a cost-effective policy). And it will continue to spend money going after big sites where file-sharers congregate. That is the stick part of its carrot-and-stick business model. They are still trying to figure out what the carrot will be, but increasingly it looks like licensing ad-supported streams on the Web. In the meantime, people will continue to download or stream free music wherever they can. Even if the Pirate Bay is ultimately shut down, there are already plenty of other torrent tracking sites ready to take its place. One of them, Mininova tracks nearly as many torrent files (1.13 million versus 1.7 million for The Pirate Bay) and already has more Web visitors. According to comScore, Mininova had 26.2 million unique visitors worldwide in February, versus 14.6 million for the Pirate Bay and even old-school torrent-tracker Torrentz had 13.7 million and has been running neck-and-neck with the Pirate Bay in terms of visitors. Other estimates put the Pirate Bay users at 20 million. Regardless of what happens to the Pirate Bay, torrent freaks have plenty of other options and always will. If the music industry really wants to fight illegal file-sharing, it needs to work on planting more carrots. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0        |
| My Name Is E potentially cracks the e-cards conundrum Posted: 17 Apr 2009 08:35 AM PDT
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| Contest: iPhone App Giveaway Spree begins shortly Posted: 17 Apr 2009 08:34 AM PDT Do you like iPhone apps? If you have an iPhone, it’s probably safe to assume you answered “Yes.” So do we. You know what else we like? Our readers. That’s why this morning we’re holding our first ever iPhone App Giveaway Spree over at MobileCrunch. Beginning at 9 A.M PST, we’ll begin giving away promo code after promo code for dozens of applications, each worth anywhere from 99 cents up to $30 bucks. We’ll be giving away one application (or package of applications) at a time - as soon as we’re out of codes for that prize, we’ll switch to the next one. You won’t know what we’re giving away in each round until it’s under way - so stay on your toes. So how do you win? Find out at Mobile Crunch >> Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.   |
| Kutcher Plays His Pied Piper Flute And Gets A Million Twitter Followers Posted: 16 Apr 2009 11:13 PM PDT
His upbringing on Twitter was a humble one. The hugely popular actor started with just a handful of followers when he signed up a few months ago. But soon, he and his famous actress wife, Demi Moore, were adding thousands of followers a day. They would talk about nothing, like everyone else on Twitter, and sometimes they would talk about each other. It’s a true web success story. Seriously though, I, like the rest of you, am glad this is over. A million users is significant only in that it means Twitter is hugely popular — which we already knew. And that it’s getting taken over by celebrities — which a lot of us saw coming. Much more interesting will be when some non-celebrity feed passes a million followers. But it may be a long time before that happens. The name of the game on Twitter is self promotion, and celebrities have a huge advantage in that department over regular folks. It’s nice that Kutcher will be donating 10,000 bed nets to fight malaria in Afria. Hopefully we’ll hear about that more tomorrow when he’s on Oprah (and she starts tweeting). We’ll see if Kutcher also follows through on his initial promise to ding dong ditch Ted Turner. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   |
| Exclusive Sneak Peek: Tweetie For The Mac Posted: 16 Apr 2009 11:12 PM PDT The Mac is finally getting some seriously awesome, native clients. Say what you want about TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop - these are all based on Adobe’s AIR platform, which is notorious for eating up memory and CPU cycles, along with weird window placement quirks. Earlier this month Nambu got a huge upgrade, and has quickly become my Twitter client of choice. But that might change next Monday, when Tweetie - easily one of the best Twitter clients on the iPhone - comes to the Mac desktop. Less than an hour ago atebits, the one-man company behind Tweetie, posted a demo video of their new Twitter client, which we’ve embedded below. We’ve also managed to get our hands on an early build of the product, and it doesn’t fail to impress. We’ll reserve our full review for Monday, but here are some of my initial impressions:
Tweetie will offer a free version that will be ad supported, as well as a paid ad-free version app for $14.95. Stay tuned. Main window, with popup TinyPic image at left Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   |
| Snow Day, Employee Arrest At Fox/MySpace Posted: 16 Apr 2009 11:10 PM PDT
All of it is chronicled by emails to employees, of course, which are promptly forwarded to us. The information theft and arrest is the more serious matter - confidential employee information, including “at least” name, social security numbers and compensation, was taken by an employee in the company’s benefit’s department without authorization, beginning in June 2008 or earlier. The information was used to “annoy selected individuals” and the now former employee was arrested and is being prosecuted by the High Tech Crimes Division of the Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office. The interesting details were left out of the email, but employees are urged to “remain vigilant for incidents of fraud or identity theft.” No need to worry, though, because for some reason Southern California Edison decided to shut down the power to Fox and MySpace’s Beverly Hills office on Thursday from 9 am to 6 pm. and employees were told to stay home. “Employees…are expected to work from home” said the memo. My guess is that more than a few of them went to the beach, which is just down the road. Emails are below. From: Fox Entertainment Group Dear Fox Employee, An unfortunate situation has recently been brought to our attention. Certain confidential employee information (including at least your name, social security number, and certain compensation information) was acquired by an employee of the Company's Benefits Department (whose employment has since ended) without the Company's authorization. At this point, we do not have any information to suggest that bank account, beneficiary, or personal medical information was also improperly acquired. We are of course obligated to alert you to this situation, and we apologize for the inconvenience this may cause. From what we have just learned, it appears the former employee first acquired the information in June 2008 (or possibly earlier). The investigation suggests that the confidential data was used to annoy selected individuals (whom we have already separately notified). However, we have no evidence to suggest that your confidential information was disseminated by the former employee to any third party or otherwise misused, and we will notify you immediately if we learn otherwise. The Company reported the former employee to law enforcement and is fully cooperating with them. In that regard, we have been informed that law enforcement arrested the former employee and that the individual remains in police custody. Law enforcement also executed a search warrant at the former employee's house at the time of the arrest and successfully retrieved data that had been acquired. The case is being prosecuted by the Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office, High Tech Crime Division. We will continue to work with the D.A.'s office and law enforcement as the case proceeds. We are also analyzing our systems to reduce the possibility of any future breaches. In addition, there are a number of precautions you may wish to take, which we have included on the next page. If you are a current employee and have any questions, please contact a manager in your Human Resources Department. If you are a former employee of the Company and have questions, please contact Lisa Klinger, Vice President of Compliance in the Benefits Department. Lisa's number is 310-369-8031 (x 3-8031 if you are connected to the Company's telephone network). You can also call Lisa toll free at 877-369-1369. Again, we apologize for any inconvenience this incident may cause you. From: FIM Human Resources Power Shutdown at Maple Thursday, 4/16 Due to a Southern California Edison power shutdown scheduled in the area between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 16, the 407 Maple Building will not be accessible for work on Thursday. Employees located at 407 are expected to work from home, as no computer or phone service will be available. If you have a laptop, please take it home with you this evening. VPN service will be available, and blackberries will also be in service. (If you have already left for the day and not taken home your laptop, the building will be accessible by badge before 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, 4/17.) Please note that Shared Drives will not be available, even through VPN, as they are hosted from the Maple office. If you have meetings scheduled to take place at 407, please arrange to conduct them via conference call or reschedule them for another day. Managers please contact employees by phone who have either left for the day or who do not have a Blackberry. Employees should check with their manager about any mission critical projects that must be completed while they are away from the office. If you are on an urgent project which must be completed by 4/17 and you do not have VPN access, please contact IT by writing the FIM Help Desk: fimhelpdesk@fox.com. If you need to arrange to work from another FIM location, please contact Facilities – facops@fox.com Unfortunately, we were just notified of the impending power shutdown. We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause. Thank you for your cooperation. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| Google Maps Now Show Views From Webcams Posted: 16 Apr 2009 08:30 PM PDT The latest layer to be turned on in Google Maps is one for webcams. Just click on the “More” button on the top right of each map right next to the “Traffic” button. When you do that, it shows you thumbnails from different public Webcams around the world as tracked by Webcams.travel. You don’t see an actual video, just the most recent still image captured by the Webcam. But this can come in handy when you want to actually see the traffic on a major highway yourself, or how the waves look like at the beach. While you are at it, you can also click on the other layers, such as Wikipedia entries,, photos Youtube videos, and public transit. What other Google Map layers do we need? Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| Go With The Flow: Product Planner Maps Out How The Web’s Most Popular Sites Function Posted: 16 Apr 2009 08:26 PM PDT When it comes to building a website, one of the key factors in establishing a sizable user base is your site’s ability to ‘go viral’. While there isn’t any magic secret to accomplishing this, there are a few things that can help - namely, making it as easy as possible for your users to sign up, and helping them invite their friends. But this is easier said than done, and determining exactly how to implement these seemingly obvious steps can play a huge role in a site’s success. Product Planner, a new site that launched this week, is looking to help companies tackle this issue. The site has visually mapped out over 100 ‘flows’ that visually depict exactly how many of the web’s most popular services operate. For example, Gmail’s signup flow consists of inviting a vistitor to first click ‘Sign Up for Gmail’, followed by a form asking for information, and finally a confirmation button that says ’show me my account’. It may sound simple, but being able to see each of these side by side can be invaluable when it comes to actually building your site. Flows are represented as a series of screenshots, arranged in either a circular or linear fashion, depending on how they work (hint: the key to going viral is to create a circular loop). And while many of these ‘flows’ are focused on the site’s all-important signup and invite processes, other flows are more site-specific, like Vimeo’s Video Embed Loop. The site looks great, with an intutive interface and clean navigation. Users can grab embed codes for Flows that they’d like to share elsewhere, and can also submit their own, though the site already features many of the web’s most popular sites. That said, the site isn’t perfect. My biggest issue with Product Planner is that there are really no explanations to speak of - you’d never know why one ‘flow’ was better than the others. Granted, you can always pay attention to flows from large companies like Google and Facebook with the expectation that they’ve put a lot of thought into these things, but it’s still tough to figure out exactly why something is working. There aren’t any comments either, which could have also helped users make sense of what they’re looking at (of course, there’s always the risk that people who don’t know what they’re talking about would leave incorrect information). Product Planner is a product of KISSmetrics, an analytics service that will be launching later this year. Disclosure: Neil Patel, one of the founders of KISSmetrics, does consulting for TechCrunch through Quick Sprout. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   |
| Forget Billboard. We Are Hunted Charts The Music People Are Listening To On The Web Posted: 16 Apr 2009 07:57 PM PDT What if there was a Billboard Charts for the music people really listened to and talked about on the Web. We Are Hunted wants to be that definitive online music chart. The service monitors the most popular songs on iLike, BitTorrent, Last.fm, MySpace Music, and other Web music services, as well as discussions on Twitter, blogs, and press sites. A collaboration between Australian news aggregation site WotNews and digital music marketers Native Digital, We Are Hunted uses a whole bunch of sentiment and semantic analysis, along with clustering algorithms to come up with the top 99 songs of the day. It then presents these in a 3 X 3 grid of album art for each song, which can be played in its entirety on the site. (The songs are streamed from YouTube or the artists’ sites). The songs themselves are pretty catchy for the most part. Here are the top nine:
You won’t find these names on the Billboard 100, but people are listening to them on the Web. My initial reaction to We Are Hunted is that it delivers on what it is intended to be: a a discovery mechanism for new music. Where it falls short is in its features and UI. It forces you to click on each song to play it, instead of letting you listen to an entire grid or the entire chart as a play list. You can log in via Facebook Connect and leave a comment on a song, and buy each song on iTunes, but you can’t do much else. And sometimes a song won’t play. But if you like the Hype Machine, then you might want to check out We Are Hunted when the songs in your iPod begin to seem old. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   |
| Kutcher Surges Past CNN On Twitter — But You Can’t Unfollow Either Posted: 16 Apr 2009 06:37 PM PDT
Kutcher surged past CNN on Thursday evening, likely clearing the last hurdle that stands between him and Ted Turner’s doorstep — he promised to ding dong ditch the CNN founder if he was the first to a million followers. Since then, Kutcher and others have upped the stakes. EA is offering Kutcher’s millionth follower a copy of every single game it makes in 2009 and a role in its Sims 3 game. And now Kutcher is offering to buy 10,000 bed nets to help stop the spread of malaria in Africa if he wins. CNN has also pledged to buy bed nets, win or lose. But the stage is set for Kutcher to hit the mark first. With over 980,000 followers currently, he’s appearing tomorrow on Oprah to talk about Twitter along with the service’s CEO Evan Williams. And Oprah, who just secured her Twitter account today, has promised that she will send her first tweet tomorrow during the show. Kutcher’s late surge to take the lead in Twitter followers has been pretty amazing. Today alone, he’s added tens of thousands of followers. This helped him overcome odds that were in CNN’s favor. The site Bookmaker.com said it had received thousands of bets on the race and favored CNN’s account to get there first at -500, with Kutcher at even money. But one oddity in this whole thing is that apparently you can’t unfollow either Kutcher or CNN on Twitter right now! Go ahead, try it, you’ll get a nice error message saying something went wrong. Is Twitter trying to ensure Kutcher gets to a million in time for Oprah tomorrow? Tin foil hat time! Update: Actually, as MobileCrunch’s Greg Kumparak just shared with me, you probably can’t unfollow either so that you can’t game Kutcher and EA’s millionth follower giveaway. So I hope you like your Ashton and CNN updates! Another oddity is that some people are seeing follower counts go way up for certain users. The CNN account is one of them, see the screenshot below. (Though I still see the correct amount.) Twitter, it appears, is having some issues leading up to the breaking of the 1 million barrier. Here’s the video Kutcher recorded on Ustream about the milestone. Notably, Kutcher says he’s going to start following more people. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| Watch Out, TwitPic: PhotoBucket Is Coming At You With TwitGoo Posted: 16 Apr 2009 05:11 PM PDT PhotoBucket, the FIM-owned photo sharing goliath that sees over 25 million monthly uniques, is taking aim at becoming the dominant photo sharing service on Twitter. The company has quietly launched TwitGoo, a media-sharing service designed from the ground up to be Twitter-friendly, allowing users to share photos with only a few clicks (and movies are on the way). PhotoBucket used to be one of the small guys, coming from nowhere in 2006 to emerge as one of the Internet’s largest photo providers. Much of its initial growth was driven by its ability to thrive on a popular social site - in this case it was MySpace, which previously didn’t have many easy options for embedding photos. Now the tables have turned, as TwitPic has come from a similarly unknown position to become the leader in sharing photos on Twitter. Traffic may still be relatively modest compared to more orthodox photo sharing sites, but with Twitter poised to become a mainstream phenomenon, media sharing is going to take off fast. PhotoBucket competitor Imageshack launched its own service in February. And now PhotoBucket wants a piece. TwitPic is the dominant player in this space with over 1 million users, but the one-man operation is having trouble coping with its rapid growth - an issue that will likely become even more of a problem as Twitter becomes more mainstream. Conversely, TwitGoo is built on the same infrastructure that powers PhotoBucket and its sister site TinyPic, which means that it should have no problem coping with a massive influx of new users. TwitGoo’s other advantage is that it will likely be perceived as more friendly to brands than startup services like TwitPic. At this point this isn’t much of an issue, but as more brands begin to embrace Twitter and create their own applications that tap into the service’s API, they’re going to want to direct any media-sharing functionality through a trusted service. PhotoBucket and its parent company FIM have already built relationships with these brands. And the site also screens content for obscenity - something that no small-time operation can do effectively. The service itself will be familiar to anyone who has used TwitPic or any of its competitors. Users sign in to TwitGoo with their Twitter credentials and then upload a photo to generate a URL shortcode, which they can then Tweet directly from the service’s web interface. The site tries to maintain the look and feel of the native Twitter interface, importing user backgrounds and consistently placing links where you’d expect them. And in the not-so-uncommon event of Twitter downtime, the service features a backlog queue, which allows desktop clients and other API users to queue their submissions for when the Twitter system comes back up. Of course, one of the things that has made TwitPic so popular is that it is integrated into many Twitter clients, including favorites like TweetDeck and Tweetie on the iPhone. TwitGoo is on very few of them, though it is hoping to catch up on this front quickly and is launching with a full API. The service is also in discussions with a number of major Twitter clients, though it can’t discuss specifics yet. This is really where the battle will be won or lost - on Twitter it doesn’t matter how nice your infrastructure is unless its third party clients support your service. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   |
| It’s a Socialthing: AOL’s Plan To Take On Facebook Connect With Lifestreaming and Chat Posted: 16 Apr 2009 03:55 PM PDT If you want to take a peek at how AOL plans to take on Facebook, you need to look beyond Bebo (the social network it bought for $850 million last year) to theBoot, a country music site hidden away off in a corner of AOL Music. A very interesting experiment is going on at theBoot that represents a major plank in AOL’s social-networking strategy. It shows how AOL plans to take on Facebook Connect, which is Facebook’s way of letting other Websites tap into its members and their activity streams. AOL is adding its own twist to spreading activity streams across the Web through a combination of its SocialThing lifestreaming service (which it bought last year and was recently rolled out inside of Bebo) and AIM chat. It is called Socialthing for Websites. When you visit theBoot, you will see a thin toolbar along the bottom that is labeled Socialthing on the bottom left (think of it as FriendFeed) and on the bottom right it invites you to sign in using an AIM account. (Yes, that is yet another frame). Once you sign in, your AIM username and password becomes your username and password for the site, just like Facebook Connect extends Facebook IDs to other sites. OAuth and OpenID options are planned for the near future. Next to the Socialthing icon on the toolbar is a prominent gear icon for privacy settings and an “Updates” tab. You can choose to always share your activity on the site, never share it, or always be asked before sharing. When you click on Updates, a window pops up showing you “Site Updates” and “Buddy Updates.” The site updates is a stream of new stories and comments going on right now at theBoot. You can tab over to “Buddy updates” to see status messages from people on your buddy list, as well as actions of your friends from other services including Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and StumbleUpon.. Whenever you comment on a story or take another action on the site itself, that comment appears not only in the site updates stream, but all of your buddies on AIM will see a little info icon next to your name, which if they click on will show your recent comment with a link back to the site. In other words, AOL is taking the 45 million active users of AIM and finally turning them into the underpinnings of a social network. Once you sign in with your AIM account, a couple chat tabs appear on the bottom right. You can chat with other AIM members on the site or you can have a private chat with people you know on your buddy list. (You can also invite your friends to the site that way). Part of Facebook Connect, I should note, also includes Facebook Chat, so there is overlap here. But AOL still has the advantage when it comes to chat. The whole project is not what you’d expect to see from AOL. Maybe that is because the product is being led by Alex Bard, the founder and former CEO of Goowy, another startup AOL picked up as a small acquisition last year. It took a while, but some of that startup DNA is finally starting to rub off on the rest of AOL. What AOL is trying to do is combine public and private message streams. You can see public streams on the Socialthing side of the toolbar and both public and private chat on the right. You can expect to see AOL roll out Socialthing for Websites across all of AOL Music, Moviefone and potentially all of the properties under its MediaGlow umbrella, which has a collective audience of 70 million unique visitors in the U.S. After AOL rolls out Socialthing for Websites to its own properties, you can bet that it will offer it to other Websites as well. The appeal would be that this is a way to socialize their sites that isn’t Facebook. It also gives them the ability to inject their content directly into consumer’s activity streams through Socialthing. Another twist that AOL is planning on adding soon is a way to filter all of these streams of information by prioritizing which public streams you see based on who you chat with the most in private. Since AOL knows your chat history, it can move to the top the public comments, Tweets, and links to Flickr, YouTube and whatnot that come from your closest contacts—the ones you actually speak to (assuming you use AIM). AOL is offering Socialthing to Websites for free because it could provide really valuable data on who is visiting what sites that could be used to target content and advertising in the future directly into the lifestream. AOL will have to tread carefully there, limiting sponsored updates, but that is an obvious direction. Now all AOL has to do is refresh its AIM client to include the the lifestream from Socialthing so that users can see one unified activity stream of both public and private messages all in one place. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.   |
| YouTube Takes Aim At Hulu With “Party Of Five” Posted: 16 Apr 2009 02:30 PM PDT YouTube announced today new measures it is taking to more prominently feature and broaden the range of content available on the site from studios including Crackle/Sony Pictures, CBS, MGM, Lionsgate, Starz, the BBC, Anime Network, Cinetic Rights Management, Current TV, Discovery, Documentary Channel, First Look Studios, IndieFlix, National Geographic. The site will now feature a new ‘Shows’ tab in the YouTube masthead, which will allow users to browse through television content by genre, network, title, and popularity (sounds like Hulu, doesn’t it?). The site now features thousands of full TV episodes, as well as hundreds of movies. Some videos will be available in HD. At this point the majority of content will come from older TV shows and movies - series like ‘Party of Five’ and ‘Married With Children’, not the current seasons we’ve been seeing on Hulu. But more deals are in the works, and I suspect that barring a disastrous response to YouTube’s premium content we’ll be seeing newer show in the next few months. The site is also refining its search options, making it easier to separate the new premium content from the user-generate videos the site has become famous for. Finally, the site is announcing a new advertising product called “Google TV Ads Online”. The product allows advertisers to place TV-like commercials within the new premium content offerings on the site. This is a significant addition, because it gives advertisers who are used to traditional TV advertising through Google’s TV Ads product a way to easily post the same ads online - they effectively just have to click a box saying they’d like to distribute their ads across all forms of a television program, included those streamed in YouTube. From the press release:
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| McKinsey’s Cloud Computing Report Is Partly Cloudy Posted: 16 Apr 2009 01:40 PM PDT McKinsey & Company released a report, “Clearing the Air on Cloud Computing,” yesterday that claims that large corporations could lose money through the adoption of cloud computing. The report paints cloud computing as over-hyped and maintains that cloud computing services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) overcharge large companies for a service the companies could do better on their own. The study also says that while cloud computing is optimal for small and medium-sized businesses, large companies will spend less if using traditional data centers. Virtualization is the optimal way to go, says McKinsey, and by implementing virtualization in-house, corporations can reduce costs when factoring in depreciation and tax write-offs. Virtualization, which McKinsey says can boost server utilization to 18% from 10%, lets you treat one machine like many, by carving the servers into many virtual engines, so that software can maximize power from one machine and add scalability. Not only is this cost-effective for companies, but cloud computing takes advantage of virtualization. The report makes some thought-provoking points but neglects to address a few key trends that are occurring in cloud server services. Innovation is rapidly changing in the cloud. The space is still very much a work in progress and big cloud computing services, like AWS, Google, Sun Microsystems and Microsoft, are regularly coming out with different products. As these companies throw their hats into the “cloud computing ring,” AWS will face increased competition in the market and could cause prices to go down to fight for market share. Amazon’s cloud computing services, in particular, are constantly evolving. What started out as pay-by-the-drink storage (S3) and computational processing (EC2), now includes a simple database (SimpleDB), a content delivery network (CloudFront), and computer-to-computer messaging (SQS). Most recently, Amazon added a web-scale data processing engine with Amazon Elastic MapReduce. (It is a framework for accessing data stored in file systems and databases). It allows developers leverage Amazon’s cloud computing power by creating applications which process huge reservoirs of data (conveniently stored in Amazon S3) in parallel. The next generation of enterprise apps is already begun to be written with the cloud and virtualization both in mind. At that point, it doesn’t make much sense to do it all through conventional data centers, when you can optimize through other services and get the best of both worlds. And many large companies currently use cloud services for a segment of their data storage, and also utilize and virtualize in conventional data centers. Microsoft recently announced Exchange 2010, a new suite of Microsoft Office-related products, are designed to be deployed and managed servers on-premises or from the cloud. Microsoft's Azure OS, which is expected to be rolled out in the fall, can host these office-related products in the cloud. It’s not a huge stretch of the imagination to speculate that in the not too distant future, Microsoft will integrate the on-premise storage and Azure storage together, thus allowing companies to tap into both utilities in the same application. The report seems to hype the cloud costs and understates the rapid changes in cloud market conditions and resultant innovation and price cutting that will take place in the near future. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| Google Shows a 3% Sequential Dip In Revenues: First One Ever Posted: 16 Apr 2009 01:09 PM PDT Google has just announced its Q1 2009 results, and for the first time ever, there has been a dip. Revenue fell 3% for the quarter versus the fourth quarter of 2008. But, for the year, revenues were still up. And it’s actually not as bad as analysts had been expecting. JP Morgan, for example, had been expecting a 4% decline quarter to quarter. And, perhaps most importantly for Google, its paid click numbers were actually up. Aggregate paid clicks were up 3% quarter to quarter, and 17% year over year. Google saw $1.4 billion in net income for the quarter, which was up 9%. Revenue was at $5.5 billion. Google now has $17.8 billion in cash and marketable securities on its balance sheet. Also of note is Google’s Stock-Based Compensation numbers. In March, the company offered employees the option to trade in options that were underwater (worth less than the option price) for new, lower priced options. This was a necessary move to encourage people to stay with the company despite its plummeting stock price (at one point it was back in the $200s after being around $750-a-share a couple years ago). For this quarter, Google only counted $11 million of the total $360 million modification charge. And Google acknowledged its layoffs this year. Whereas it had 20,222 employees as of December 31, 2008, it had 20,164 as of March 31, 2009. But the biggest employee news is the official announcement that its President of International Operations, Nikesh Arora, will replace Omid Kordenstani as Google’s global sales chief. Kordenstani will become a “senior advisor” to Google’s executives. During the call, the most interesting comments came during the question and answer session when people asked about Android and Twitter. On Android, Google CEO Eric Schmidt noted that there would be several significant hardware announcements with partners coming up shortly. He declined to give anymore details, but basically it sound like a good number of new Android phones are on the way. Which is good, because I’m awfully sick of the G1. Interestingly, Google noted that 8% of all mobile browsing is now down on Android phones. This is second only to the iPhone. Someone also asked about using Android on netbooks, and Schmidt sounded excited that people were taking the initiative to use the operating system in that way. He noted that things like that are why Google decided to open source Android in the first place. On the subject of Twitter, Schmidt gave the company a big wet kiss saying that it, “proves innovation is alive and well in Silicon Valley.” In terms of how it can make money, Schmidt said that he thought advertising on pages where brands or products are highlighted would be the way he’d do it. And he noted that Google would be happy to pursue that with them (as has been noted before, the two sides are talking). Live Notes: Google CEO Eric Schmidt:
Google CFO Patrick Pinchette:
General notes:
Q&A Session:
Below, find the financial summary released:
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| Oprah’s First Tweet Will Be Tomorrow On Her Show. Soccer Moms To Take Over The Service? Posted: 16 Apr 2009 12:17 PM PDT
Apparently, her guest tomorrow will be the man she calls “the King of Twitter,” Ashton Kutcher. I’m sure he’ll be talking about his race for a million followers on the service (he should be there by then), and presumably about his pledge to help fight malaria in Africa if he crosses the million mark before CNN. Knowing this, Twitter CEO Evan Williams tweet from earlier today makes a lot more sense. “Tomorrow just became a very big day. (Sorry for the teaser — more later.),” he wrote. And it should be a very big day indeed. Oprah is known for her loyal (some may say “rabid”) following, as she can turn any book or product she talks about on her show into pure gold. And Twitter will likely be no different. I suspect Twitter may see its biggest one day jump in new sign ups tomorrow — certainly, it will be the largest influx of women of a certain age group into the service in one day. After a month in which it gained some 5 million new users, one might wonder how Twitter can sustain such growth. Well, getting an endorsement from Oprah will help — big time. Oprah’s Twitter account has “just” 30,000 follower as of the time of this writing. Come tomorrow around this time, she should have well into the hundreds of thousands. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her pass both Kutcher and CNN, eventually. But tomorrow, Kutcher will undoubtedly see his Twitter followers see a huge surge as well — especially if he does talk about helping the fight against malaria. Of course, I still wonder if the race for followers isn’t hurting Twitter as a medium in some regards, but there’s no stopping Oprah. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.   |
| 300,000 Kindle 2s Sold To Date Posted: 16 Apr 2009 12:09 PM PDT
The first generation device sold around 400,000 units total over its lifespan, we’ve heard, although one estimate by Citi analyst Mark Mahaney put it as high as 500,000 based on a surge in sales in Q3 2007. Amazon expects to sell 800,000 or so of the Kindle 2 devices in 2009, or double the volume of the first generation device. Mahaney’s most recent estimates are for more than 1 million Kindle 2s to sell this year, and the current sales numbers absolutely support that, based on how the economy goes. Amazon could easily increase production to satisfy a surge in demand. Our sources on Kindle sales have proven extremely reliable in the past. Last August we nailed the number of Kindle 1 devices sold at that time. And we first broke the news of the Kindle 2 and the new large screen Kindle. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   |
| Should Twitter Remove Its Follower Count? Posted: 16 Apr 2009 11:27 AM PDT
Engadget cofounder Peter Rojas thinks it may be time for just that. “I’m beginning to think that Twitter would be a better place if it didn’t list anyone’s follower count,” he tweeted out today. That may indeed be true. It’s not just the Kutcher/CNN race, there have been a lot of users getting annoyed with the service — or other users — because of things like Twitter’s recommended user list (which currently includes the TechCrunch account). Some people are pissed off that only accounts of notable users seem to be included on it, adding tens of thousands of followers to their already high follower counts. Why does anyone care? Well, in some cases it’s ego. The more followers you have, the more “popular” you are. And the more likely it is that other users will retweet what you have to say. In other cases it has to do with web site traffic. Accounts like TechCrunch’s tweet out links to their stories, which followers then click on — depending on how many followers you have, this can drive a lot of traffic to your site. And in some cases, it’s just a game. A lot of people on the web are bored; attempting to do things to raise you Twitter follower numbers is a way to pass the time. Twitter, at its core, is supposed to be about communication, not your follower count. A couple of years ago when the number of Twitter users only registered in the thousands, a user would tweet something out and maybe only a dozen other people would see it. Was Twitter any less “fun” than because of that? No. But now, it seems like there’s a mentality that if you only have a few dozen people following you on Twitter, what’s the point of saying anything? Numerous people have given that as an excuse as to why they don’t tweet very often. So what if you couldn’t see how many followers other people had? It would certainly take a lot of the pressure off users to gain more followers. And that could be a good thing. Perhaps the greatest thing about Twitter is that it can be what you make of it. Some people use it to tweet out where they are, others use it to tweet out funny things that pop into their heads, others use it to share article they’re reading, others use it to find information. With the drive to increase follower counts, there’s certainly a concern that it’s becoming less about the core communication, and more about self-promotion and straight-up bullshit just tweeted out hoping that others will see it and start following you. But at the same time, not having a follower count, could actually make people use Twitter less. And while that’s not necessarily a bad thing for many users, it means less overall activity on Twitter — and that is a bad thing for Twitter. If there’s no game to play, a lot of people would have no choice but to stop playing it. That could lead to a decrease in quantity — but perhaps an increase in quality. With Twitter’s growth now absolutely exploding, perhaps it’s time to start thinking about quality over quantity. I really don’t want to see Twitter overrun by people pimping their own brands to gain more followers. I don’t want to see Twitter Search — its most valuable asset in the long-term — saturated with retweets from celebrities because millions of users are following them. At least Kutcher has the right idea behind why having a million followers on Twitter is interesting. In the video below he talks about the insane idea that one person using this medium can have a larger audience than a traditional mass media powerhouse (CNN). (Entrepreneur Andrew Keen has more interesting thoughts on this that he recently shared with us.) Unfortunately, we’re unlikely to see any “regular” person ever reach such status on Twitter. Kutcher can do it because he’s a movie star — so it really shouldn’t be a shock that he can get a million people to follow him. So why should we care how many people follow him? Or for how many people follow anyone else for that matter? We really shouldn’t. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| Ning: 1 Million Social Networks Strong Posted: 16 Apr 2009 10:01 AM PDT
Ning continues to grow steadily despite the fact that it banned ‘adult’ social networks late last year (some had suggested that the site relied on these adult networks to drive a significant amount of traffic, which isn’t the case). Ning now reports 22 million registered users overall, 700,000 of whom have created their own networks. Of the 1 million networks created, 200,000 remain active, across which 2.5 million new pieces of content (including comments and photos, and other media) are added per day. Recently the site has been adding a number of new features that help its network creators spruce up their networks, including a persistent chat feature similar to Facebook Chat. The site also recently revamped its homepage at Ning.com to make it easier for users to manage their activity on multiple social networks and to discover new ones. Network Creators can also access a new directory of OpenSocial applications which run the gamut from games and Ecards to enhanced messaging services. Because many of its users (particularly network creators) tend to be quite passionate about the sites they’ve built, Ning hasn’t been without its share of controversy, but its continued growth seems to indicate that most users are satisfied. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.   |
| Interview With Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg: “Blogging Is Not Slowing Down” Posted: 16 Apr 2009 08:25 AM PDT
The takeaways: - BuddyPress, which is supposed to transform an installation of WordPress MU into some sort of a white-label social networking platform, is going to be launched ‘relatively shortly’. Mullenweg calls it “Facebook-in-a-box”. - The latest version of WordPress (version 2.7.1) is seeing about 27,000 downloads a day (the built-in auto updater helps a lot, apparently). - WordPress.com saw 175,000+ new blog posts from a little under 200,000 bloggers in the last 24 hours (translated to about 44.5 million words) alone. A quick look at the site’s comScore stats pegs monthly uniques to have reached 24.4 million U.S. visitors last month, compared to 48.3 million for Blogger and 13.3 million for Six Apart services. For reference, Facebook’s March traffic was at 61.2 million unique visitors. - Real-time status updating is not threatening regular blogging, according to Mullenweg. When asked if Twitter is sucking the life out of blogging, he responded that blogging is not slowing down and that the service is actually quite complimentary with WordPress. - Automattic acquired 3 companies last year (IntenseDebate, PollDaddy and BuddyPress) and is definitely considering doing more of that. Mullenweg says “it’s fun” but that he’s not planning on making any announcements shortly because he’s still waiting for the prices to go down. Here’s the full interview: Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   |
The first man in space. The first man on the moon. The first man with a million Twitter followers. Yes, this is one of those great achievements in human history. Congratulations Ashton Kutcher.
Los Angeles tech companies may not be able to stand up to their northern California neighbors when it comes to technology clout, but they sure do seem to have a more interesting and varied work life. While Silicon Valley based Facebook is busy getting 
Up until this point, despite all the press he was getting, Ashton Kutcher was behind CNN in the race to become the first Twitter user with a million followers. Not anymore.
Talk show host Oprah Winfrey has taken control of her own Twitter name, 
Amazon’s 
Over the past few days, actor Ashton Kutcher has been 
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