Wednesday, June 3, 2009

The Latest from TechCrunch

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Once Again, the Justice Department Is Confused. Tech Companies Steal Employees From Each Other Every Day.

Posted: 03 Jun 2009 08:56 AM PDT

There she goes again. The Justice Department’s antitrust chief Christine Varney is convinced that tech companies are doing wrong and her underlings are going after them aggressively. She has already given Google notice that she is keeping an eye on them. But now the Justice Department is looking into possible collusion among large tech companies including Apple, Yahoo, and Google for purportedly agreeing “to not actively recruit employees from each other,” according to the NYT.

Yup, that’s a real head scratcher. I guess IBM is not involved in the cabal, since Apple hired way one of its top chip designers, Mark Papermaster, and got into a big lawsuit with IBM over the incident. And Yahoo, nobody would dare steal employees away from Yahoo. That never happens (cough, Microsoft). Or from Google—unless you are Facebook.

Stealing employees from each other is a way of life for tech companies. Silicon Valley is one of the most competitive employment markets in the country—for CEOs and VPS to engineers. But all Varney can see when she looks out West is a large antitrust prize. Doesn’t she have anything better to do? Here is a suggestion: Investigate the weird spikes in gas prices that happen regularly for no apparent reason or the insanity that is health care pricing. But leave tech companies alone until they actually step out of line.

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A Philosophy of Netbooks

Posted: 03 Jun 2009 08:18 AM PDT

Back in the olden days I used to read Joey Devilla's blog all the time. He was - and is - known as Accordion Guy and he produced consistently cool content. Well, I just stumbled on him again and found that he's doing great, philosophical posts on tech. Take his examination of netbooks vs. smartphones, for example. He compares netbooks and smartphones to two brands of fast food pie. Netbooks are sub-par pies made to look like a real slice of pie - you know you're not getting good pie but the appearance of a pie shape and crust creates cognitive dissonance and makes you think you're getting screwed (which, in most cases, you are - netbooks are sub-par notebooks and horrible "communication devices"). Smartphones are like McDonald's pies in that they don't look like pie - they look like a pared down and highly subjective vision of pie. You have everything in there - the filling, the crust, whatever else - but you know you're not buying real pie and you can sit back and "enjoy" it on that level. Netbooks are faking it while smartphones have no pretensions of pie-like goodness. With me so far?


eBay Starts Stripping Skype Voice And Chat Buttons From Auction Listings

Posted: 03 Jun 2009 06:18 AM PDT

In the past we’ve written about eBay’s Skype conundrum, or the trouble the former has had to successfully integrate the latter’s communication capabilities into the e-commerce giant’s web services. In the recent press release announcing that eBay plans to spin off Skype as a separate company and file for an IPO in 2010, eBay President & CEO John Donahoe admitted as much when he was quoting stating that it’s “clear that Skype has limited synergies with eBay and PayPal.”

And now Skype is being downright disintegrated from eBay’s services, starting with the UK website. This is what the dry announcement message reads (emphasis ours):

eBay is discontinuing Skype voice and chat buttons in listings as of 10th June 2009 in an effort to remove features with limited buyer and seller usage.

This change does not require any action on your part. We are just notifying you that as of June 10, you will no longer see the Skype voice and chat options when you list new items, they will not be included on the new item page, and they will no longer appear in your existing listings.

We appreciate your continued commitment to good communications with your customers.

Regards,
The eBay Team

This comes as little of a surprise now, but I couldn’t help looking up former eBay CEO Meg Whitman’s words when the acquisition news - the company acquired Skype for roughly $2.6 billion ($1.3 billion in cash and the value of 32.4 million shares of eBay stock) back in September 2005 - hit the wire:

“Communications is at the heart of e-commerce and community. By combining the two leading e-commerce franchises, eBay and PayPal, with the leader in internet voice communications, we will create an extraordinarily powerful environment for business on the net.”

Could have happened, hasn’t happened. It’s just the way things go.

(Thanks to Daryl Griffiths for the tip)

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The Trunk Club For Men: Never Shop For Clothes Again

Posted: 03 Jun 2009 05:01 AM PDT

Most men hate to shop. It takes way too much time, we are out of our element, and we end up getting really dorky clothes because we feel like not buying something is an admission of failure. Online shopping is better, but most of us would rather browse through cameras, Web phones, and computers than shirts and chinos (at least I would). Enter the Trunk Club, a new way to shop online.

The Trunk Club gives men their own personal shopper via Skype video sessions who try to figure out what kind of clothes they wear, what is lacking in their wardrobe, and what kind of clothes they might be willing to try. (These are real people, not virtual personal shoppers like Covet). Then they put together about nine different pieces of apparel and send it to the customer in a FedEx box. Once a man (the service is only for men) gets his “trunk” of clothes, he tries them on via another Skype session (he is supposed to change off camera, but I am sure some perv customers will “forget”), give his feedback to his personal shopper, and then decide which ones to keep. He can return any or all of the clothes at no expense to him. He only pays for what he keeps.

The business model is the same as a retail store. The Trunk Club buys clothing at wholesale and sells it at a normal retail markup. Except that the company has deals with clothing manufacturers which doesn’t require it to buy any minimum inventory. In fact, there is no inventory. Clothes only gets shipped when there is a customer who needs a particular item. It is not a discount service. But the personal shoppers come for free (thanks to Skype and the Internet). Customers don’t pay anything extra for them as they would in a fancy department store. The personal shoppers get a commission based on how much clothes they sell. And the men who are its customers never have to step foot in a store again.

I went through a mock session with one personal shopper from the Trunk Club, Lisa Bruckner. She was very personable and it was fun talking to her. I told her what kind of clothes I wear (jeans or suits, depending on where I am going), what is missing in my closet (polo shirts for summer), my measurements, and other details. Normally, she would then have a box of clothes sent to me and then we would have more back and forth on Skype to fine tune the selection process. But since I was on deadline, I asked her just to send me pictures of what she would have sent (see below). Of the nine items she sent, maybe of three of them are things I would actually buy. I’m not really a $48 T-Shirt kind of guy. The Hugo Boss dress shirt looks decent, the Penguin Polo, and the pants. But that orange Polo just wouldn’t fly in New York. I was hoping for better results, but then I am really picky. Also, my wife (who has final say in what I am allowed to wear out the door) was not a fan of the selection, and didn’t like the idea of another woman picking out clothes for me. But she likes shopping, so she doesn’t see the appeal of the service. I am sure that with a little back and forth Lisa would soon be able to hone into my quirky style.

The part I don’t like about the service is that you don’t get to see what your personal shopper picked for you until it arrives in the mail. I guess there is an element of surprise akin to opening up a present, but you really have to trust your personal shopper to know what you want. At least initially, it would make more sense for there to be some back and forth digitally between the customer and the personal shopper (with the personal shopper presenting a few ideas and then narrowing them down quickly).

The other problem the Trunk Club is going to have to deal with is men who sign up not because they want to spend $572 for a box of clothes, but just because they are lonely and want to talk to a woman over video Skype. (All the personal shoppers are attractive women). There is a whole perv element that these personal shoppers are going to have to learn to deal with, but all they need to do is hang up and block those men from Skype.

The Trunk Club was started by Joanna Van Vleck, a personal stylist who opened up a showroom for her clients in Bend, Oregon. She was planning to open up retail outlets across teh country where men could come in for their personal shopping sessions, but her angel investor backed out after the economy tanked. By necessity, she turned to the Skype model and only needed $50,000 in angel capital to get going. She has been in private beta with about 600 customers for the past six months. She now has 21 shopping experst working on commission, and is adding 5 to 6 every month. The Trunk Club’s hybrid approach is both high touch and scalable at the same time. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more retail concepts like this spring up in different categories, with real people helping you make a buying decision over Web video.

Here’s a promotional video that explains the concept:

Trunk Club from The Trunk Club on Vimeo.

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beeTV Raises $8 Million For Stunning Personal TV Recommendation System

Posted: 03 Jun 2009 03:05 AM PDT

The TV guide doesn’t know who you are, what your favorite movie genre is, what you’ve watched in the past, what your mood is, and so on. Because of that, it is incapable of providing you with any recommendations about what to watch on your TV, or which videos you’re likely going to enjoy consuming right now on your PC or even your mobile phone. With the sheer volume of available channels and VOD content out there, that’s becoming quite a problem for many people. But if beeTV has its way, that problem could soon become a nuisance from past times.

The Milan, Italy-based startup founded in 2006 by an international team of experienced technology and media experts, has just raised $8 million in Series B funding from Italian VC firm Innogest, the largest investment this fund has ever made. BeeTV aims to use the capital to ‘change the way we watch TV’ by pioneering what it calls a Personal Content Channel (PPC), a personal TV suggestion engine that helps you find your way in the ocean of VOD titles and channels out there by surfacing the best choice for you based on your profile and even the mood you’re in.

Here’s how they pitch it:

“beeTV offers the platform operator's subscribers their own Personal Content Channel (PCC), which resides in their set top box (whether IPTV, cable, satellite, mobile or DTT), their mobile phones and their PC. This unique Personal Content Channel identifies the subscriber, searches all the content sources, including broadcast TV, subscription TV, VOD, SVOD, PPV, and PVR/Catch-up and pushes the relevant content to that subscriber.”

The company’s recommendation engine comes in three flavors: beeSTBox is its flagship product which was launched at the recent DEMOfall 08 conference in San Diego (see video below). It’s a solution designed for multicast distribution platforms including cable, satellite and IPTV. To manage, control and share your online TV viewing experience, the company created a product called beeWeb, and it’s also bringing the PCC to mobile devices to enable always-on connectivity and the ability to interact with set-top boxes on the go. It currently has an iPhone application in the works that will allow TV viewers to control their STBs, get recommendations for shows & movies that are relevant to them and available in their specific TV subscription, and also enable them to watch trailers and set their STBs to record or create notifications for the shows they would like to watch.

BeeTV is currently focusing on finalizing its 1.5 version and claims to be engaged with some of the leading TV providers in the world for trials that are expected to roll into their commercial phase by the end of 2009 and beginning of 2010. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was actually a lot of interest for this type of technology coming from content owners, publishers and media companies.

This one looks like a winner, and that was even before I knew who is spearheading the algorithm team that’s responsible for the powerful recommendation technology behind the platform: Gavin Potter, an experimental psychologist formerly responsible for IBM’s Centre for Business Optimization in Europe, who you might know as “Just a Guy in a garage” from the Netflix Prize competition. See this Wired profile for more background on the man.

I’m just hoping beeTV and their investors are in it for the long run and don’t get acquired by one of the majors before they have the chance to expand their platform on a worldwide scale through partnerships and white-label distribution deals. Because everyone deserves the right to stop wasting time looking for content they want to consume thanks to sophisticated technology that relieves us from the need to make choices for ourselves.

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One Vision For The New AOL: Redefine Online Content As Print Magazines Fail

Posted: 03 Jun 2009 02:25 AM PDT

There’s lots of speculation on what the soon-to-be independent AOL should do to drive user and revenue growth, and stay relevant in a world dominated by Google, Microsoft and Facebook. New CEO Tim Armstrong says he’s taking some time to take input internally and create a plan.

But some sources we’ve been talking to say that there’s a real push to remake AOL into an online media powerhouse - one that will rise just as the print media world is falling apart.

There are some real assets. First is that dial up business, which still brings in around $1 billion in free cash a year. The business is deteriorating rapidly, but it will bring in real cash over the next 18-24 months before it peters out. The company also has a social networking base with Bebo and AIM, and integration of those services into other AOL properties and third party sites continues.

But the real opportunity for AOL is to grab marketshare in a relatively open field, say some people close to the company. A contingent of AOL executives are said to be pushing Armstrong to embrace what I’ve heard is called the “Toyota strategy” by building and buying scores of great online media brands. AOL is the “Toyota” and the media brands are like the many car models that Toyota successfully pushes - Highlander, Camry, Pious, etc. The analogy isn’t perfect, but it gives you a good idea of how they’re thinking of organizing things.

The foundation for this strategy is already firmly in place, and has been since AOL acquired Weblogs, Inc. in 2005 for $25 million or so (that was three AOL CEO’s ago, when Jonathan Miller was running things). All those great Weblogs brands have continued to grow at a breakneck pace. Sites like Engadget, TUAW and Joystiq are all great niche brands on their own. And AOL has expanded into many other sub-brands through their MediaGlow division under Bill Wilson.

MediaGlow was unveiled a year ago. These are AOL’s content sites - music, finance, the blogs, and new sites like PoliticsDaily and Love.com. Combined, these sites bring in 76 million unique monthly visitors (Comsore, May 2009). 27 of the Technorati Top 100 blogs are owned by AOL.

The MediaGlow team wants to pick up the pieces of the dying print media business. Advertising is falling off a cliff (billions of dollars in advertising has evaporated). Combined with the high structural costs of print media (high wages, and well, printing on paper and mailing to readers) and the result is a lot of high quality talent is suddenly willing to take a job in online, even at a much lower salary.

The plan would be to build and buy scores of new brands in every monetizable niche possible. If you see a magazine at the newsstand covering a topic, AOL will have their own online brand for that topic, in blog or other format. They’ve already got the publishing platform with MediaGlow. New brands can be inserted or built at little marginal operating cost. And the talent is out there for the taking right now.

That’s where all that cash from the dialup business comes in. They’ve got the runway of 18 - 24 months to buy properties and hire journalists to staff these new brands. And once they get going it’s unlikely any of the other big portals can catch up, particularly if AOL has hired the best talent out there.. Yahoo is the one competitor in a position to do something like this, but there’s been no indication from CEO Carol Bartz that she finds this direction interesting.

I like this strategy - it’s clear and bold. It’s not just following Facebook or Twitter. It’s not entering AOL into the soul-sucking search wars. But building out online content at a massive scale with proven journalists shed from the print world, all backed by dialup cash flow makes a lot of sense. It’s a war that AOL can win. All they have to do is fire the guns.

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my6sense Raises $2M for Digital Intuition, Native iPhone App Imminent

Posted: 03 Jun 2009 12:59 AM PDT

my6sensemy6sense is announcing it has raised $2 million in Series A financing from private investors. The company is pioneering ‘digital intuition‘, artificial intelligence designed to assist everyday users separate the signal from the noise. This is a problem that has grown in magnitudes of severity since the introduction of blogs and RSS into our lives, and compounded even further by the recent rise in popularity of streams (thank you Facebook & Twitter).

In my initial review I tested my6sense’s technology which they chose to apply on an iPhone web app that basically acted like an RSS reader with, well, a sixth sense. The magical part was not only that it worked, it required me to do nothing but consume the content (in my case, blog posts). I didn’t have to rate content-to-interest relevance or assist the application in any way. It took a couple of days to achieve what I described as my "A-Ha Moment"my6sense

Suddenly, very relevant info was floated to the top of the main "TOP MESSAGES" pane. By relevant, I mean posts I would absolutely have clicked on through my Reader, but would have had to sift through hundreds of posts before doing so.

my6Sense will use the additional funding to advance R&D and its marketing efforts. It will also continue to focus on applying its technology in mobile applications. To this end, the company plans to release a native iPhone app in the very near future which we will be sure to cover.

Photo Credit: alles-schlumpf

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Covet.com Will Be Your Stylist And Personal Shopper In One

Posted: 03 Jun 2009 12:10 AM PDT

Shopping for fashion on the web can be an overwhelming experience. Not only can you find an unlimited amount of clothing on the e-commerce sites of retailers like Nordstroms and Saks.com, but there are also plethora of web-based sites that offer deals for fashion, including Bluefly, Zappos and ShopBop. I love snagging great deals on designer and high-end clothes but simply don’t have the time to peruse all of these sites to find sales for clothes that are in my size and fit my style.

The folks who brought us Riya and visual shopping search engine Like.com have launched Covet.com, a site that acts as a free virtual personal shopper and pseudo stylist for users. Covet will first determine your style based on your responses to a series of photos and outfits worn by celebrities. I found myself choosing between a Chanel-clad Anna Wintour or a leggings-clad Lindsay Lohan. Covet also determines your clothing preference by letting users choose between images that could represent varying types of style (the Eiffel Tower vs. the Golden Gate Bridge, Beer vs. Champagne).

After a series of these decisions, Covet ask you to specify your shoe and clothing sizes and then gives you a profile based on your choices. Style categories vary from edgy urban to sporty eclectic to couture glam, which you can change if Covet gets it wrong. You can also edit your style to filter suggestions by desired (or hated) brands, colors, and styles you prefer when it comes to clothing, shoes and accessories.

Once your style is established, Covet will send you either daily or weekly emails with clothing and shoes found over thousands of online merchants that fit your style and are available in your size. Emails will include two sections of recommendations: those that are on sale and new but full-priced arrivals. If you click on the item in the email, you will be led to a Covet landing page, where you can then click to buy the item directly from the retailer. Covet’s co-founder Munjal Shah says that the site will soon let users indicate if the suggested items fit their style, and Covet will use this knowledge to make more accurate suggestions in the future.

Covet crawls the sites of more than 5,000 retailers and uses the same image recognition technology to group together similar products as Like.com. Covet’s business model is also similar to that of Like.com; Covet makes money on a pay-per-click basis. Each time a user clicks to a retailer’s site, Covet takes a small cut. The same model has proved to be lucrative for Like.com, showing steady revenue growth for a young startup. The company, which launched in 2006, reached a $1 million annual run rate within a year and hit a $20 million revenue run rate last year. Shah says that Like.com’s current run rate is well over $20 million in revenue.

Covet’s main competition is ShopItToMe.com, another personalized shopping service on the web. ShopItToMe requires you to filter desired results solely by brand and size whereas Covet creates a profile based on style, color, brand, fit and size. Both are useful for online personal shopping but Covet’s style analysis adds an interesting twist to service. I do think that daily emails about available products could get a little spammy but both services let you choose to receive the alert emails once or twice a week instead of every day.

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Intuit’s Partner Platform Goes Multilingual With Federated Apps

Posted: 02 Jun 2009 11:25 PM PDT

Intuit, the company that makes personal and small business software, has launched a new capability called "Federated Applications" that allows SaaS developers to write their applications using any programming language and cloud platform and connect them to the Intuit Partner Platform. Intuit’s Partner Platform provides a foundation for developers to build and deploy apps that can be integrated with Intuit’s small business accounting software, QuickBooks. QuickBooks has close to 25 million users within 4 million businesses who can buy these apps on Intuit’s own version of its Salesforce.com-like App Store, Intuit Marketplace.

The “Federated Applications” functionality lets developers who have existing SaaS applications that are built with any programming language, database or cloud computing platform publish their apps on Intuit Marketplace. Applications won’t have to be rewritten to conform to QuickBooks but will instead go through a minor configuration process.

Last year, Intuit opened up the API to its management software, QuickBase, to developers who wanted to build web applications and businesses on top of the product, in an effort to enter a space already occupied by Salesforce.com, Google, and Amazon. This recent news seems like another strategic move for Intuit to open up its app marketplace in order to gain a greater variety of apps from different developers. Previously, developers were limited to developing an app for QuickBooks directly on Intuit’s Partner Platform and then could only market that app solely on Intuit Workplace. Now, app developers who have SaaS offerings on other CRMs or software products can tap into the QuickBooks community, and vice versa.

For example, Vertical Response, which creates an e-mail marketing, online survey and direct mail application, sells its app on the Salesforce.com AppExchange and will now sell its app on Intuit Workplace. The VerticalResponse app that sells on Intuit Workplace adds sales and marketing tools to the accounting functionality of QuickBooks.

Other “Federated Apps” on Intuit Workplace include Dimdim, a web conferencing tool; Rypple, a collaborative app; Setster, which assists with scheduling; and ExpenseWare, a travel and expense reporting application.

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RingRevenue Raises $3.5 Million To “Track Calls Like Clicks” For Affiliate Networks

Posted: 02 Jun 2009 11:09 PM PDT

RingRevenue, a pay-per-call platform designed for affiliate networks, has closed a $3.5 million funding round led by GRP Partners, Rincon Venture Partners, and Great Pacific Capital. The company is looking to tap into the huge volume of sales that occur via the telephone, helping affiliate networks and ad agencies track phone calls in much the same way online ad clicks are tracked.

The platform allows affiliate networks to assign both unique local and toll free phone numbers to publishers running a given ad campaign. These unique numbers can then be used by the advertiser to track the performance of their publishers’ campaigns and compensate them accordingly. CEO and founder Jason Spievak acknowledges that there are other companies offering call tracking to advertisers, but says that these weren’t built with the affiliate community in mind. Using most other systems, advertisers are forced to manage the logistics of distributing the numbers to publishers and subsequently compensating them. RingRevenue lets advertisers leave the logistical issues to the affiliate networks, who are well versed in them.



The platform also includes a number of features designed to help advertisers maximze their returns. RingRevenue can filter inbound callers in real time, which allows advertisers to selectively choose which callers they’d like to deal with. The service does this by matching phone numbers against a large database of known callers, using data that the company has acquired in-house, along with a number of third party data vendors.

Despite the fact that RingRevenue launched in stealth only nine months ago, it has managed to sign up four of the top ten affiliate networks, including Commission Junction. Aside from its impressive roster of clients, RingRevenue has experience on its side — many of the teammembers previously helped create CallWave, an online telecommunications company that went public in 2004.

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Mahalo’s Case Of Mistaken Identity

Posted: 02 Jun 2009 09:41 PM PDT

About 45 minutes ago I tried logging into Mahalo to stake a few claims for myself in the site’s revamped directory, which pays users for creating and maintaining their entries. This has proven far more difficult than it should be. In fact, it seems like Mahalo’s account system is totally broken.

First, I attempted to create a new user name for myself. I decided to go with MrCody, which is the name of my dog. Things seemed normal at first, until I noticed that my username at the top of the screen was now ‘mahendranunna’. A refresh later and Mahalo said “Welcome cddesai”. Being the inquisitive reporter that I am, I attempted to navigate through the user’s control panel. I could view the pages that they were currently managing. I tried to ask a question on Mahalo Answers under one of these accounts, and it seemed to work (the site is currently down so I can’t check to see if it actually posted). Over the course of the next twenty minutes, I was logged in as at least 8 different users. I’m not entirely sure what I was doing to jump between identities — sometimes a refresh would do it, other times I’d have the same username for a few minutes. It was bizarre.

We got in touch with CEO Jason Calacanis, who says that the problem is a “caching issue”, and that “the users aren’t actually logged in as another users (just appears that way).” Fine. But the site is still going down sporadically, and I still haven’t gotten the damn Email to activate the account I signed up for in the first place.

Disclosure: Jason Calacanis is our partner in putting on the TechCrunch50 conference.

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The Real-Time Stream And 4th Annual Summer CrunchUp At August Capital

Posted: 02 Jun 2009 04:52 PM PDT

crunchup-1

Save the date and let the frenzy begin. Our 4th annual summer meet-up at August Capital will be Friday, July 10 this year.

We can’t thank David Hornik and his partners at August Capital enough for having us back, yet again. Each year the party gets a little more lively, the deck gets a little more crowded, and yet David welcomes us back with unflinching enthusiasm. Thank you.  We promise not to trash the place too much.

As our meet-ups have grown in popularity, we’ve expanded the format from simple mixers to timely editorial roundtables. Last year, the topic was the Mobile Web Wars just then brewing. This year, we’re taking on the real-time stream and dedicating a full day to exploring all the rivulets coming together to make it the trending topic on the Web.

get_tickets1

What do we mean by the real-time stream?  It’s popping up nearly everywhere you care to look.  Information on the Web is coming to us increasingly in streams. Twitter kicked off the shift, but everyone from Facebook to FriendFeed to Google to AOL is quickly adopting the information stream as a dominant mechanism for distributing data to people exactly when it is produced. As I’ve written before: “The stream is winding its way throughout the Web and organizing it by nowness.” RSS is dead. Long live the stream.

A whole new set of products is cropping up around these information streams to help consumers filter them and manage their flow, such as Tweetmeme and Seesmic Desktop. It seems as though a new one is launching every day. And the real-time stream is beginning to impact other parts of the Web as well, such as search and corporate reputations.

It is time to figure out where all of this is going, to bring together the smartest people we can find and map out the different paths the stream can take. We’ve just begin to organize this mini-conference, but already the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. We are calling it a CrunchUp because it will be highly participatory and real-time in every sense of the word. TechCrunchIT editor Steve Gillmor and I will be hosting the event.

Speakers and panelists from Facebook, FriendFeed, Microsoft, Salesforce, Seesmic, and Tweetmeme will be there, and we are just getting started (stay tuned for full lineup). Companies pushing real-time streams to new levels will also be demoing their products, some which haven’t yet launched publicly, such as Andrew Baron’s Magma. (If you have an eye-opening demo or want to launch a product at the CrunchUp, please contact our conference producer, Asad Akbar).

Additional participants will be announced in the coming weeks. If you’ve got some real-time hotness to share, contact us. You will be able to find the speakers, agenda and details as they evolve here.

The CrunchUp will take place on Friday, July 10, between 9:00 am and 4:30 PM at the historic Fox Theatre in Redwood City. Tickets are $295 and are on sale now through Eventbrite. Admission to the August Capital party is automatically included in your CrunchUp ticket (with expedited check-in to August Capital.)

The CrunchUp also gives us a great sponsorship platform for start-ups and brands to reach both conference and networking attendees. Please contact Jeanne Logozzo or Heather Harde to learn more about sponsorship packages and custom opportunities. Additional details here.

We’ll plan to release the first batch of August Capital meet-up tickets the week of June 15, but we’d really love to spend the whole day with you real time. Hope you can join us.

Photo credit: Flickr/Justin Lowery)

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Mahalo Will Now Pay You To Create Topic Pages

Posted: 02 Jun 2009 04:51 PM PDT

Jason Calacanis wants to inject what he calls the “Skeeball economy” into Mahalo, his highly tuned site for creating and searching topic pages. (Disclosure: Calacanis is our partner in putting on the TechCrunch50 conference). Since launching Mahalo two years ago, his staff and free workers on the Web (AKA, the Mahalo community) have built about 100,000 topic pages that tend to rank highly in Google search (about two thirds of his traffic comes from search engines). But Mahalo is hitting a ceiling in page creation because the wiki approach is just too slow and complicated. So it is launching a completely new design which makes it much easier to create pages and—here is the Skeeball part—rewards people with “Mahalo Dollars.”

These Mahalo Dollars, which Calacanis first started distributing in his Q&A site Mahalo Answers, can be converted into real money at an exchange rate of 75 cents to the dollar or can be saved up to spend in Mahalo itself in the future. Calacanis saw all the activity that was happening on Mahalo Answers, which he says broke one million users last month, and wanted to bring that over to Mahalo proper. Now anyone can claim a topic and create a search results page around that topic or keyword. There is one editor per page and Mahalo will split the AdSense revenues 50/50 for any page he or she makes and maintains. A typical page could generate $20 to $50 a year. If you make 100 of those, that turns out to be some nice pocket change.

The more pages you make, the more points you get and can climb from being a white belt to a black belt. With each new level, you get more privileges. At some point, members will be able to buy and sell pages they have claimed (for Mahalo Dollars, of course). In order to make page creation easier, Mahalo will now assist editors by turning up appropriate links, images, videos, news stories, questions and answers, and more. All you have to do is put in a search term, pick which elements should appear on the official topic page, and write up a short description. It is all driven by APIs in an attempt to bring the appropriate information to editor’s fingertips. Mahalo needs to go from 100,000 topic pages to millions of them, and fast. It is using these semi-automated approaches to get there.

Whether or not these will produce the best pages on any given topic remains to be seen. One problem I see is that claiming a topic and the associated revenues will be on a first-come, first serve basis. If someone comes along later with better domain expertise on, say, sushi (see screenshot below), he or she is out of luck. So there will be a bit of a land grab. With that, there is certainly a danger that people will shift from making spam pages to Mahalo pages. Calacanis dismisses this possibility. He notes that spammers will always be able to make more money on their own and that there are too many tripwires in Mahalo’s system to make it worth their while. Plus, Mahalo will yank any pages it deems too spammy.

The bigger challenge for him is to get people to come to Mahalo on their own instead of through search engines. People who come from search engines tend to be drive-by traffic. They look at 1.5 pages then leave. People who come directly or through referring sites look at 4 to 5 pages per visit. Calacanis is doing a lot to get more people to come to his site. Now he needs to get them to stay.

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Bing Is Now Your Default Search Engine On IE6, Whether You Like It Or Not

Posted: 02 Jun 2009 04:12 PM PDT

For years, Microsoft has tried to shrug off its reputation as a monopolistic tyrant. Today comes news that seems to undermine those efforts pretty badly.

The Next Web reports that users of Internet Explorer 6 are being forced to use Bing as their default search engine — even if they’ve manually switched their preference to another search provider, like Google. Attempts to switch the browser to something other than Bing result in an error message.

Now, let’s set aside the fact that IE6 is a scourge on the web that opens users up to a wide array of critical security issues and forces developers to implement ugly hacks because the browser doesn’t support many web standards. The fact of the matter is that a sizable number of users are still using IE6 (over 5% of TechCrunch readers still use it, and the global marketshare is closer to 20%). We’re talking millions of users who are potentially affected by this issue.

While the vast majority of users affected probably won’t even notice the change, some are beginnig to complain (you can find threads in Google’s forums here and here). Microsoft has confirmed the issue to Search Engine Roundtable, explaining that it is currently investigating a solution.

Given that Microsoft has long been the target of antitrust cases, there’s no way the company would have done this on purpose. But it’s a hilarious bug nonetheless, and so far there’s no easy way to fix it (expect Microsoft to issue an update in a few days). In the meantime, I suggest any affected users try a modern browser like Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or IE8.

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Google Launches A Location-Based Android App To Save Tourists

Posted: 02 Jun 2009 02:12 PM PDT

lpd-1I’m in New York City right now for Internet Week and considering I haven’t been here in eight years, I’m fairly lost most of the time. I’ve gotten by just looking out for big groups of people with iPhones to figure out where I should be going, but when I’m by my lonesome and just looking to get a quick bite to eat, I basically have no idea where to go. So it’s awesome that Google has just launched a new Android app that lists the places around me.

Places Directory is a straight-forward app created by some Googlers as their 20% time project. When you launch it, it looks up your location and gives you a directory of the types of establishments around. If I click on “Bars” for example, I’ll then get a list of the bars around me complete with a thumbnail image, the location’s distance from me and a star rating. Clicking on any of the listings will take you to a page with an overview of the place, including its address and phone number. You can also read reviews of the place by Google local users and see more pictures of the place.

While there are no shortage of apps on the iPhone that do basically the same task, there are less available on Android. And while some of the apps that do exist focus mostly on restaurants, Places Directly can also find things like ATMs or museums. And even the best apps out there that do these place listing suffer from a lack of information in smaller towns. That won’t be an issue in NYC, but could be in my hometown of Pepper Pike, Ohio. But Places Directory has Google’s huge database of information at its disposal, which means that even in remote towns, you’ll likely have some information about local places.

You can find the app here, or in the Android Market. It’s available for free.

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Facebook Sends Test Message Saying Hi; Developers Tingle With Excitement

Posted: 02 Jun 2009 02:11 PM PDT

This is funny. At 10:29 am PST this morning all 2,000 members of the Facebook Developers Group got a message that said “Hi” as the subject and “test” in the body. Since then we’ve received multiple “tips” from Facebook developers with variations of the message “I wonder if they plan on sending out some news soon?”

Well, Facebook should be announcing their annual F8 developer conference some time soon. But our guess is this was just what it said it was - a test message that was sent out by accident.

So many companies would be stoked to see conspiracy theories pop up like this around an accidental test message. What I love about this story isn’t the accidental message, it’s the excited response from the developers.

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Bing Brings Mobile Service To Life, Almost

Posted: 02 Jun 2009 12:17 PM PDT

It feels like just yesterday that Microsoft had blessed the internet with its new search engine, Bing, and as of today we mobile addicts have access to this service on our phones. If you head over to m.bing.com on your handheld, you'll find yourself on a lite version of this Bing's titan service. So does this compete with the Google's mobile service? Not just yet, and it seems that Microsoft has omitted all those fancy features that has made Bing a near-overnight success. I borrowed TechCrunch's unique search results test to throw it through the mobile engine, here are the (disappointing) results:


First Hands-On With the Pixel Qi LCD/E-paper Screen

Posted: 02 Jun 2009 12:15 PM PDT

A friend of the Crunch charbax sent us the first hands-on video of the Pixel Qi e-paper screen, a new kind of LCD technology that uses standard LCD fabrication tools to create an LCD/e-paper/transflective screen that displays full color in direct sunlight and takes very little power. This is not to be confused with the Kindle's e-ink technology. Think of it as a new form of LCD that has e-ink properties - readability, low-power cost, and barely any lag - in full color.


YouTube XL Brings The World’s Most Popular Video Portal To Your TV

Posted: 02 Jun 2009 12:13 PM PDT

This morning YouTube invited a small group of press to unveil the latest evolution of the site’s viewing experience. It’s called YouTube XL, and it’s going to bring the vast majority of YouTube’s content to your TV or large-screen computer monitor. It’s already live, and you can check it out here.

At its core YouTube XL is basically a redesigned version of the YouTube website. It’s still run in the browser, and you don’t have to download anything to get it working (assuming you have Flash installed). It looks (and according to the demo, feels) like a native application.

One of the first things you’ll notice about the interface is that it’s very clean. This is due in no small part to the fact that it currently doesn’t have any ads (we can probably expect this to change). But YouTube has stripped out many of the suggested videos, comments, and other content that clutters the main site in favor of a much more streamlined interface that is usable from across the room.

One of the most appealing aspects of XL is that it will work on nearly any device that has a browser and can connect to the TV. That means you’ll be able to use it though your PS3 (though it sounds like there are some limitations - for example, the PS3 doesn’t support HD YouTube videos yet). Likewise the Wii will be able to use the new site, but because of its lower hardware capabilities it outputs at at a lower resolution.

Of course, one of the most key elements to offering a TV-like experience is the abiity to control the application remotely. You can use a wireless keyboard, but YouTube has developed found something a bit more practical called Gmote, a remote control app that runs on Android phones. You can scroll around menus, and also input text if you’d like to search. It’s only on Android so far, but because it’s open source you can potentially develop for other devices as well. The input is sent over your Wi-Fi network.
Update: Gmote is actually a third party application that works well with YouTube XL, but YouTube didn’t develop it in-house.

With Hulu’s release of Hulu Desktop earlier this week, and today’s release of YouTube XL, it’s clear that the video wars are going to be fought in the living room over the next few years. YouTube XL definitely has potential, especially with its integration with the PS3 and the Wii (Hulu Desktop only works on computers). Now the site just needs to work on bringing more premium content to YouTube - it’s fun to watch silly user-generated videos on my computer, but if I’m going to couch surf through YouTube on my big screen TV, I’d rather watch content that’s a little more polished.



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Chrome For Mac “Coming Along Fine”

Posted: 02 Jun 2009 12:05 PM PDT

picture-11There have been a bunch of Google events recently, covering a range of products, but the same question seems to rise above all others at each of them: When is Chrome coming for the Mac? Even Sergey Brin is asking it. Google has committed to getting the browser running on OS X sometime this year, but after several months in development, it’s still isn’t ready. Today, we get a nice, bland update from Google: “Google Chrome for the Mac is coming along fine,” says a post on the Google Blog.

The same post points to a more in-depth post on the Chromium Blog which discusses getting sandboxing working on the Mac version. Sandboxing is a security measure Chrome uses to allow to allow it to render sites and run applications without the possibility of harming your overall computing environment in the case of an attack through the web. Apparently, such a technique was tricky to set up for Windows, but it’s much simpler to set up for the Mac and Linux versions of Chrome. Google has posted more information about it here.

So that’s another feature of Chrome that looks good to go on the Mac. I’ve been running the most up to date Chromium builds on my Mac for a while, and it does look like it’s getting close. Certain things though, are still not ready for prime time. While most pages seem to be rendering nicely, and most apps like Gmail not only run, but are very fast, things like Flash implementation isn’t yet a go.

It seems a bit surprising that it’s taken this long for Google to get it working perfectly on the Mac, especially considering that the man behind the excellent Camino browser (a Mac-only browser built by Mozilla) is leading the project for Google. But the keyword is “perfectly” — as Google notes, “It’s important to us that the Mac port of Chromium feels and performs like a native Mac application, and that it provides the kind of high-quality experience Mac users expect.”

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The City Of San Francisco Now Lets You Submit Complaints Via Twitter

Posted: 02 Jun 2009 12:05 PM PDT

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Twitter co-founder Biz Stone announced today that San Francisco residents can now send direct messages via Twitter to the city of San Francisco, @SF311, to complain about street cleanings, graffiti, potholes, abandoned vehicles, garbage issues, noise complaints and more. 311 is the primary contact for city services; residents can call 311 to reach a call center to get answers to questions about city services or submit complaints.

Twitter users and San Francisco residents can simply follow @SF311 (which automatically auto follows) to send and receive direct messages about complaints and questions. The useful part of the new service is the ability to send pictures or video of various offenses, such as a pothole, overflowing garbage can or graffiti. Once you submit a DM to @SF311, you will receive a service request number. Apparently, there is a city staff member devoted to handling and responding to @SF311 Tweets.

San Francisco is also using CoTweet, a Twitter business platform that acts like a CRM, to manage and track these conversations. CoTweet’s platform supports both marketing communication and response-driven customer support via Twitter.

We’ll see if submitting complaints via Twitter helps make the city’s response more speedy. Newsom is a big fan of Twitter and even announced his bid for governor of California via Twitter.

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Obligatory Facebook Post from Nintendo’s E3 Press Conference

Posted: 02 Jun 2009 10:48 AM PDT

img00108-20090602-0949

Hold the phone! I know all of you were expecting a post about Twitter from Nintendo's E3 press conference, but I'm afraid to report that it's just Facebook today. Sorry.

You'll soon be able to upload wacky images from your DSi to Facebook for all your friends to see. Isn't that exciting? I LOVE FACEBOOK (and Twitter)!!!

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