The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- You Call 50,000 Palm Pres Sold A Success? Investors Don’t Think So.
- Meet The Latest Twitter App Incubator: 140Labs (And The “I’m Big On Twitter” Project)
- WWDC 2009 CrunchGear Liveblog
- Wonga Is On Its Way After A $22m Funding
- SGN’s Jet Dogfighter iPhone Game Lands, Turns Out To Be Pretty Fly
- Livekick Is The Ticket To Finding Your Favorite Concerts
- Current TV Journalists Sentenced To 12 Years In North Korean Labor Camp
- Paid Twitter Streams Are Here: Super Chirp
- The Morality And Effectiveness Of Process Journalism
- Quick Peak? Bing’s Reign As #2 Search Engine Lasted One Day.
- What’s In A Name? That Which We Call An “iPhone 3GS” By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet
- Seesmic To Launch New Desktop Version, iPhone App And Browser Based Client
- Asia-Bound With GeeksOnAPlane
- A Map Of Social (Network) Dominance
- Scan Your Books And Search Them On Google
| You Call 50,000 Palm Pres Sold A Success? Investors Don’t Think So. Posted: 08 Jun 2009 09:00 AM PDT Some early estimates are in on how the Palm Pre did its launch weekend. J.P. Morgan puts sales at more than 50,000, other analysts go as high as 100,000. Everyone is trying to spin this as a success because Sprint stores “sold out” of their inventory. Investors aren’t buying the story. Shares of Palm are down 10 percent, as of this writing. The opening weekend Palm Pre inventory was too low to begin with—either because of manufacturing constraints, Palm’s own financial constraints, or by design. It’s always good PR to be able to say you sold out. But if Palm seriously wants to go up against the iPhone it is going to have to do a lot better. When the first-generation iPhone launched two years ago, in comparison, Apple sold 146,000 units its first weekend. By the time Apple came out with its second iPhone 3G last year, it sold one million units the first weekend. Apple has been prepping the market for the past two years, spending millions on convincing everyone that they need a Web phone. Palm and others should be able to tap into all of that good feeling during this Summer of Smartphone Love. If Palm and Sprint don’t get their act together, there won’t be much love left for them. If the experience described by iJustine in the video below is any indication (she couldn’t even find a working Palm Pre at either Best Buy or a Sprint store to try out before buying), the low-inventory excuse is already wearing thin with consumers. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 
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| Meet The Latest Twitter App Incubator: 140Labs (And The “I’m Big On Twitter” Project) Posted: 08 Jun 2009 08:04 AM PDT
Furthermore, it seems like Lindzon is also spinning off a Twitter-only incubator / fund along with some of his partners at Social Leverage, dubbed 140Labs. Currently, the 140Labs website actually leads to a Twitter web service that enables anyone to set up communities on any given topic (much like StockTwits), but we got confirmation that a separate company bearing the same name has been formed together with Dan Kelly, James Altucher - who was appointed CEO - and several other individuals that aims to incubate other projects related to the popular micro-sharing service. This is kind of similar to what Betaworks, an investor in StockTwits and co-investor in TweetDeck together with Lindzon, is doing. The first upcoming initiative from the 140Labs team will be I’m Big On Twitter, which can quite accurately be described as a HOTorNOT for Twitter users. The service is not live yet, but Pallian gave us a sneak peek at it earlier today. There’s not much to explain about the service, especially if you’re already familiar with HOTorNOT. You can use your Twitter avatar or upload a picture from your computer, and others get to rate the way you look on a scale from 1 to 10 and follow you on Twitter while they’re at it. That’s about it, although a related dating application is apparently also in the works. More Twitter related services are on the way, Pallian told me, including one that aims to compete with Super Chirp which yesterday launched as the first service that enables Twitter users to monetize their message streams. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Posted: 08 Jun 2009 06:54 AM PDT  We're here in Moscone and ready to rock. Watch this space for upcoming coverage and live streaming from the convention center. What will we see from Apple? An iPhone 3GS? A tablet? Steve? Robot Steve? Follow along with WWDC Bingo and tune in at 10am PT/1pm ET for full live coverage. Until then, keep an eye on this space for updates during the long wait.
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| Wonga Is On Its Way After A $22m Funding Posted: 08 Jun 2009 06:40 AM PDT
The USP (”unique selling proposition”) is that Wonga is the first consumer finance company to fully automate the lending process, providing a completely online credit solution around the clock. Via the web site, applicants select exactly how much cash they need and can then determine their own loan cost by selecting how many days they want the money for. The company’s risk and decision technology means applicants receive an instant answer, and if they’re successful, Wonga deposits cash into their bank account within an hour, at any time of day or night. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| SGN’s Jet Dogfighter iPhone Game Lands, Turns Out To Be Pretty Fly Posted: 08 Jun 2009 03:35 AM PDT
About a month ago, Michael got to test-drive (well, test-fly) SGN’s new jet dogfighter game before its official release in the App Store, and deemed the graphics to be ’stunning’. I’m embedding the demo video he recorded here below, but we should get an updated video of the gameplay from the company soon which we’ll add here as well. Or, as from today, you can also just go to the iTunes App Store and buy the premium version of the game yourself (it’s priced $9.99). The name of the game is F.A.S.T. and the main difference with other jet dogfighter games for the iPhone like Top Gun and Flying Aces is the multi-player aspect and the incredibly good-looking 3D graphics of the whole thing. You can play the game against other people over WiFi (both one-on-one and two-on-two) and the game neatly switches to “God view”, that is an elevated view of the rest of the fight, when you crash or get shot down. You really ought to play it to get a feel of what it’s like to fire missiles and a machine gun from the jet and follow the path of a fired missile as if you were sitting on one, because it’s really hard to explain how much this game rocks without you actually trying it. Let us know your thoughts if you decide to purchase the game. On a sidenote: if you don’t want to see a picture of SGN CEO Shervin Pishevar playing the game wearing an F14 Fighter Helmet, don’t click here. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Livekick Is The Ticket To Finding Your Favorite Concerts Posted: 08 Jun 2009 03:00 AM PDT Livekick, the Kayak-like concert recommendation and tickets search engine, has emerged from private beta. Founded by the entrepreneurs who started Grouper.com (which was bought by Sony in 2006), Livekick, which we originally reviewed here, helps users discover live concerts in their geographic vicinity and purchase the cheapest available tickets. Livekick’s current search engine includes more than 75,000 concerts in the U.S. from more than 20,000 artists at close to 40,000 venues. LiveKick asks you for several pieces of information before recommending concerts. First, the site requires you to add you location. Second, the site tries to gauge your musical tastes by allowing you to select your favorite artists by name, or by importing artists from your iTunes library, computer music library, MySpace Music, Last.fm, Pandora, iLike, blip.fm or Rhapsody accounts. Livekick creates a musical profile based on your favorite artists and will automatically import new artists that are added to playlists and music services. After establishing your musical taste and location, Livekick’s proprietary technology will crawl ticket sites like Ticketmaster, LiveNation, StubHub, TicketWeb, Tickets.com and eBay, as well as user-generated content sites such as MySpace Music, to inform you of promos, cheap ticket deals, and ticket sales for the concerts of the artists you listen to. The Livekick search engine performs daily updates of ticket pricing info for the concerts that it tracks in the US and provides real-time updated ticket pricing information from the concert ticket web sites. The site will take you to the site where the tickets are being sold to purchase concert tickets.  You can access your account to see recommended concerts on Livekick and the service will also send you newly announced concert recommendations via email or Twitter. The site also aims to be a dashboard for your concert activity by providing users with a customized concert calendar with your favorite artists' performances (you can export this to your Outlook or iCal calendars). The “Your Artists” feature tracks your favorite artists with tour listings, user-generated videos from their live concerts and links to artists' web sites. Livekick also offers a downloadable desktop widget that will automatically scan your computer daily for new music files and adds new artists you listen to on your computer to your Livekick account. The startup is encouraging developers to use Livekick’s API to add the real-time concert listings to other sites. Livekick currently powers links for CBS Radio listeners to find out about live concerts by artists they hear on the radio, and to find the cheapest tickets available online. As we wrote in our original review, Livekick doesn’t aim to be a social network but wants to integrate with user’s existing social networks and behavior.  While Livekick’s site has a multitude of offerings and interesting features, it is hoping to make a name in a crowded space. Competitors to Livekick include Songkick, ShowClix, and hearwhere. It’s easy to draw comparisons between LiveKick and Kayak, both are powerful aggregators in their respective areas, travel and event tickets, that are saturated with competition. The compelling part of Livekick’s model is that it doesn’t require a lot of work on the users’ part and builds off of the musical technologies, like iTunes and others, to make its site more interactive. This could help Livekick stand out in the crowd. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Current TV Journalists Sentenced To 12 Years In North Korean Labor Camp Posted: 08 Jun 2009 01:33 AM PDT
The pair was sentenced by the top Central Court in Pyongyang - which also rules out the ability to appeal the verdict - in a non-public two-day trial that started Friday as U.S. officials demanded the release of the two women. In a statement, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said:
As NewTeeVee briefly points out, neither Current TV nor its founder Al Gore have so far publicly commented on the situation and the brutal sentence. Now the LA Times says a Japanese TV channel has reported that Gore would be prepared to fly to Pyongyang and secure the women’s freedom (this was depending on the outcome of the trial, but it could have hardly gone any worse than this). Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Paid Twitter Streams Are Here: Super Chirp Posted: 07 Jun 2009 08:32 PM PDT
This is a theme we’ve touched on in the past. There is a huge market for celebrity fan pages that Super Chirp will play right into. In fact, 83 Degrees CEO Narendra Rocherolle wrote a guest post here last year called A Missed Opportunity - Britney On Twitter where he talks about the idea. Twitter is mobile and it’s real time, two huge advantages over normal fan sites. And it’s constantly refreshed with new content. Britney Spears has 1.7 million Twitter followers. How many of them would be willing to pay $1, or $10, per month to see a premium stream of her content? Here’s how Super Chirp works. Unlike Twitpub, where publishers have to create a new Twitter account, Super Chirp works through direct messages (Twitter’s private message system). That means publishers can leverage their existing Twitter accounts to promote the paid streams. Users subscribe to the content on the Super Chirp site, pay via Paypal, and then get the messages via DM. They can also visit Super Chirp to see all those paid messages, and sort them by publisher. This is a natural product for celebrities to embrace. But it’s also interesting for charities - loyal supporters can donate to the charity and get a stream of news relevant to that charity, or whatever. Some news outlets may try to charge for streams as well. I could imagine that at least some of our followers on our main Twitter account would pay to get additional information if it had enough value. Any publisher that wants to sign up can as long as they have a Twitter account. The publisher sets the price, between $0.99 and $9.99 per month. Super Chirp keeps 30% of the gross, and that includes the Paypal fees. So the Publisher ends up with 70% I think it’s a fantastic idea that at the very least may prove out the product for Twitter itself. If Twitter launches something like this directly, Super Chirp could become irrelevant quickly. Although, if I were running Twitter and Super Chirp got traction, I’d buy the service and port over the publishers and paying users to keep it all going. 83 Degrees is the same company that launched Power Twitter, a service I’m absolutely addicted to. You can read more about Super Chirp on the 83 Degrees blog. Update: Here’s one guy who has already signed up. Looks like he’ll be doing $9.99/month stock tips — but he’d like Super Chirp to up the range. And it looks like Loren Feldman of 1938media just signed up as well as the “funniest guy on Twitter,” for $0.99 a month. Feel free to leave your Super Chirp profile in the comments if you sign up as well and say what you will specialize in. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| The Morality And Effectiveness Of Process Journalism Posted: 07 Jun 2009 05:36 PM PDT
In December they wrote about Facebook revenue woes just, as it turned out, at the time that Facebook saw a huge spike in advertising dollars that will propel them to as much as $600 million in revenue this year. Then there was the Tesla article that prompted quite a response from CEO Elon Musk. That article was retitled and rewritten to correct errors and change the overall tone. I can’t help wondering if our occasional criticism of the NYTimes prompted their most recent attack, this time aimed squarely at us. Not only does writer Damon Darlin get a lot wrong, he just absolutely failed to write the real and far more interesting story that was staring him in the face. When Damon reached out to me by email to talk about the story, I wrote back something along the lines of “The Sunday New York Times scares the shit out of me” because of their reputation for twisting conversations to fit whatever story they’ve decided to write. But Damon persisted, saying “I want to call you about a column I am doing on different ways news organizations approach reporting rumors.” Seemed fair enough, I have lots of thoughts on that subject. We talked for 20-30 minutes by phone. About 30 seconds of dialog, remixed to change the meaning and context entirely, made it into the article as quotations. None of the rest of our talk seemed to influence his thesis, that blogs can’t be trusted, at all. Damon was laser focused in the article on a post we ran talking partially about Apple/Twitter acquisition rumors. Here’s that post: Twitter Mania: Google Got Shut Down. Apple Rumors Heat Up. Damon says:
Damon is suggesting that I reported the rumor as if it were real, and waited until deep into the post to say anything about it being unlikely. 133 words into it! The fact is we didn’t talk about the rumor until the third paragraph of that story, and the statement about it being unlikely to be true came immediately after the sentence that stated the rumor:
There’s just no way to interpret this paragraph as a cheap way to get traffic by misleading readers. We say exactly what we were hearing, and what we believe to be true. And by the way, it shouldn’t matter, but we’ve subsequently confirmed that Apple and Twitter were in fact in acquisition discussions, and the original source for our story was correct. The other money quote from Damon is also misleading and was taken out of context:
Note the break between "Getting it right is expensive” and "Getting it first is cheap." The break is there because there were paragraphs of dialog between them. Damon saw a way to slap them together to make us look bad. He did that because it fit his original thesis, which he had formed prior to talking to us. The Real Story The real story is what I said between those two sentence fragments, and it’s that stuff that makes all the difference. I talked to Damon about how stories evolve on our blog. How it can start with a rumor, which we may post if we find it credible and/or it’s being so widely circulated that the fact of the rumor’s existence is newsworthy in itself. But then we evolve a post to get to the truth. Jeff Jarvis calls this Product v. process journalism: The myth of perfection v. beta culture in a post today. His arguments deserve to be fleshed out into an entire book. We don’t believe that readers need to be presented with a sausage all the time. Sometimes it’s both entertaining and informative to see that sausage being made, too. The key is to be transparent at all times. If we post something we think is rough, we say so. If we think it’s absolutely true, we signal that, too, while protecting our sources. A good example of this is another Twitter story we wrote, this time about Google. in Sources: Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter (Updated) we wrote, based on a solid source, that Google was in late stage talks to acquire Twitter. The post itself brought out other sources who disputed that the talks were in late stage. Within minutes after posting we had updated the text, adding “Yet another source says the acquisition discussions are still fairly early stage, and the two companies are also considering working together on a Google real time search engine. But discussions between the companies are confirmed.” That update is 100% correct. Google was in talks over a data deal, and there were discussions of an acquisition. Our original source got his information from a Google employee. We have subsequently confirmed that a Google employee did in fact tell him that they were in late stage acquisition discussions with Twitter, because he believed it to be true. There was some internal miscommunication about the discussions. But anyway, media outlets like the NYTimes think that having to update a story is a sign of weakness. I believe the opposite, that it’s a sign of transparency and a promise to our readers to continue to give them the best information we have. Corrections and updates are made constantly to big news posts. Some people ask why we don’t just wait until we have the whole story before posting. That’s where the cheap/expensive quote above comes in. The fact is that we sometimes can’t get to the end story without going through this process. CEOs don’t always take our calls when we’re asking about speculative rumors. But when a story is up and posted, it’s amazing how many people come out of the woodwork to give us additional information. It’s that iterative process, which Jarvis nails completely, that I was trying to guide Damon to. He can like it or hate it, but it works. And readers love it. The only people who don’t like it are competitors who like to point out that a story was partially wrong, and that they got it right later. But the fact is that they didn’t even know there was a story to begin with. Our original post kicked off the process, and they, like us, started digging for the absolute truth. The other thing Damon conveniently left out of his article are the many, many big stories that we have broken over the years. There’s a reason that we are no. 1 on the TechMeme leaderboard. There’s a reason why we have more than twice the weight of CNET, at no. 2 and the NY Times at no. 3. It’s because we have an exceptional reputation for honesty and hard work, and we spend all our time in the community building friendships with the people who are driving this industry forward. I translated the word “friend” into “source” for Damon so he could understand what I was talking about. I don’t just call these people when I have a question on a story. I also call them to hear about their kid’s elementary school graduation, or to give them advice on which venture capitalist might want to invest in them. They trust me, and they talk to me. Here are a few of the stories that we’ve broken over the years. These aren’t stories where we followed someone else, they’re things that we broke first and nailed. I don’t think the NY Times or anyone else can point to this kind of track record:
These are just a few of the big stories we’ve broken over the years, and there are countless other smaller stories that we’ve owned completely as well (like this). Readers flock to us because we have the most interesting tech news and because we always maintain 100% transparency. Our love of this community is obvious to our readers. I just wish fear of the unknown didn’t blind the NY Times and others to the future of journalism. Because that fear is driving them exactly away from the truth. I always shudder when journalists say “don’t say something, get a source to say it and then quote them.” It leads to really awful stuff. Pretending that you’re writing one story when you’re really writing another, and then twisting what your sources tell you to fit whatever it is that your editor told you to write isn’t ethical journalism. It may check all the boxes that were laid out for you in journalism school, but it isn’t anything other than op-ed with nothing real to back it up. Update: NYTimes editor Tim O’Brien, who has trashed us before, tells Jeff Jarvis via Twitter “@jeffjarvis really, it has nothing to do with a “playground fight”. it’s just a a difference of opinion. you’ve aired yours, which is great.” here. One problem - the NY Times article wasn’t labeled as an opinion piece, it was labeled as factual reporting. This is a really serious issue in my opinion. And someone else on Twitter points out that the NYTimes loves the rumor, too. Update 2: Robin Wauters points to this post where he questioned a somewhat sensationalist headline on a NYTimes blog post. The title of the post was subsequently changed and a link was added back to us in explanation. The link was later removed by the editor. That’s called process journalism. There is actually a whole laundry list somewhere of NYTimes articles that had to be updated based on later facts coming to light, but I really didn’t want this to devolve into “i know you are but what am i.” however, we can go that route, too, if we have to. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| Quick Peak? Bing’s Reign As #2 Search Engine Lasted One Day. Posted: 07 Jun 2009 03:42 PM PDT
On June 4, Bing had over 15% of the U.S. search share market, according to the data. On the same day, Yahoo had just over 10%. The following day, Yahoo had almost 11% while Bing had fallen below 10%. And yesterday, Bing had fallen to 6.68% while Yahoo rose again to 11.33%. Meanwhile, the same data suggests that while Google took a big dip during Bing’s reign, it too has now started moving back upwards as Bing declines. Not that Google was in any real danger — on June 4 (the day of Bing’s #2 position), Google had fallen to 72% of searches in the U.S. Now it’s just about back up to 80%. Worldwide data shows the story to be basically the exact same. Bing was #2 for a day then Yahoo regained its place as Bing fell. Of course, it’s important to note that StatCounter is not the be-all end-all measurement tool for such numbers. It claims to track the browsing behavior of over 2 million users across 3 million sites. But the overall trend is undeniable — Bing shot to fame quickly, and once the initial hype wore off, it’s now falling back down. Microsoft needs to keep pushing those TV and web ads to keep its name in people’s minds. Otherwise, Bing runs the risk of having already peaked. Update: As Matt Cutts (who yes, works for Google) points out in the comments, StatCounter updates every few hours, so there is also data for today already. And it’s more bad news for Bing. It’s now down to 5.65% in the U.S. — yes, that’s less than what Live.com was at last month. [thanks Anurag] Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
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| What’s In A Name? That Which We Call An “iPhone 3GS” By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet Posted: 07 Jun 2009 02:45 PM PDT
Details of such a device (or devices) have been trickling out over the past few months. It now seems fairly likely that the device will look similar to the current iPhone 3G, perhaps with a different, more matte-finish back and a loss of the silver ring that goes around the screen now. It will likely feature a better camera — probably 3.2 megapixels (as opposed to the current version’s 2 megapixels) and could have autofocus. The device should also be able to record video. It’s also possible that it could have a front-facing camera, though that may be saved for a future version rather than this one. Speed will likely be a focus as the device should have a faster processor, more RAM and be able to handle faster 3G connection speeds. And that leads to two final rumors: The device’s name and battery life. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber made his predictions for the WWDC keynote this morning, talking about what he’s heard and what he’s unsure about. He has a great track record when it comes to such things, so when he says he’s heard a new possible name for the device, it’s at the very least probably a code name, which he notes. And I hope it is a code name, because it’s kind of lame: iPhone 3GS. As I allude to above, he makes the case that the “S” in iPhone 3GS would stand for “Speed.” That makes sense given what Apple is likely to tout with this version, but is a rather boring naming convention. I would much rather see Apple go with some other names that have been tossed around like “iPhone Video” or the “iPhone Pro.” The latter makes some sense given the other recently reported talk that there will be a slightly cheaper version of the iPhone that will be for sale when this new version comes out. A lot of people including Gruber believe this cheaper version could simply be the current iPhone 3G reduced in price to either $149 or $99. Eventually, such a model would undoubtedly be phased out in favor of a new, smaller model just as Apple has done with its iPod line. And that’s why I still have some hope that Apple will simply call its new iPhone the “iPhone,” while it gets ready to transition to an “iPhone nano” or whatever they’ll call that when it comes out eventually (not tomorrow). But calling it simply the “iPhone” could raise some confusion if the cheaper iPhone model is still the “iPhone 3G” — some people might be tricked into thinking that the iPhone 3G is more advanced than the one which would be called the iPhone. So that’s a roundabout way to describe why would could be stuck with a clunky iPhone 3GS name. I just wonder if that name will draw some confusion from people misreading it as the plural version of the iPhone 3G. I can just see ads touting that a store has iPhone 3Gs in stock — while they mean the iPhone 3GS. And just try doing a Google search for “iPhone 3GS,” — yeah, that’s pretty useless. Not that Apple would dictate a name based on a Google search. Of course, I also thought the MacBook Air was a bad name because it sounded like “MacBook Error,” but that seems to have worked out okay for Apple. The other juicy tidbit in Gruber’s predictions is that he’s heard this new iPhone 3GS will have 15 to 20% better battery life. If true, that is awesome. I recently complained about the diminishing battery life of my iPhone 3G, but when it was still young, I found the device’s battery life to be pretty good — not great, but good, considering how much I was using it. But a 20% boost on top of that would be most welcomed. [photo: flickr/kennymatic] Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Seesmic To Launch New Desktop Version, iPhone App And Browser Based Client Posted: 07 Jun 2009 01:12 PM PDT I had an informative chat with Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur at the TechFellow Awards Friday night, where he revealed to me the future plans for Seesmic Desktop, a desktop Twitter and Facebook client that’s built on Adobe Air. Seesmic will launch a new version of the desktop client next week that will let users compress their stream of Facebook updates and Twitter messages into one column. Currently, the client divides streams from different accounts and social networks into several columns. The new version also features a new button that will let you post a Tweet to multiple Twitter accounts at the same time. And Seesmic will also let you see tracking stats from links sent out with url shortening service bit.ly. Seesmic’s current version lets you use a variety of other url shorteners, including tr.im and Snurl, but doesn’t let you see stats within the client itself. According to Le Meur, Seesmic will soon be offering a browser based client. This offering is actually appealing, considering that Adobe's AIR platform has some strange UI bugs and quirks and tends to use a good amount of resources on computers. And Seesmic will also launch an iPhone app, which is currently under wraps along with the web-based product. Details about the features of the browser client and iPhone app will be officially unveiled at TechCrunch’s Real Time Stream CrunchUp on July 10. Seesmic Desktop, which faces competition from popular client and rival Tweetdeck and a plethora of others, officially launched in April. Le Meur tells us that Seesmic is getting about 10,000 downloads a day. PeopleBrowsr, another social network aggregator, recently made the opposite switch, adding a desktop Adobe Air client to its browser product. As TechCrunch’s Robin Wauters recently wrote, the social network aggregator market is almost fully saturated. It seems like every day there are new startups that are trying to venture into the already competitive landscape. So it makes sense that Seesmic would want to not only build up its offering with useful features, but also try to conquer all the mediums—web, desktop and mobile. Disclosure: TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington is an investor in Seesmic. I am not. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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| Posted: 07 Jun 2009 11:51 AM PDT It’s been over three months since I wrote anything here on TechCrunch, but over the next 10 days or so you’ll be hearing more from me as I travel with a group of 32 techies through East Asia as part of GeeksOnAPlane, a field trip of sorts organized by Dave McClure intended to open our Western eyes to how the technology industry works in Japan and China. The web as experienced by the biggest continent on the planet unfortunately gets short shrift on the blogs that regularly hit Techmeme. I personally can profess to have only cursory knowledge of the trends and companies that come out of Asia, and that knowledge consists mainly of echoes that get passed along by word of mouth. Sarah Lacy has done all of us a favor by recently reporting from China, but we can always use more to enlighten us about what’s going on across the Pacific. In a couple of minutes, I’ll be boarding a plane bound for Tokyo with the group you see above. And over the next few days we’ll be attending conference-type events, such as Startonomics Tokyo, where we’ll hear about a variety of topics such as the Japanese investment climate and startup success stories. My main goal is to share with you all what this all looks like to someone who’s familiar with the web but from an almost purely American point of view. If you find these insights interesting, I encourage you to follow GeeksOnAPlane on Twitter. I’ll also be posting snippets of my experience to my own account. If you want to comment on any of our travels, use the hashtag #goap on Twitter. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
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| A Map Of Social (Network) Dominance Posted: 07 Jun 2009 10:28 AM PDT Even on the Web, world dominance must be achieved one country at a time. While Facebook has long been the largest social network in the world, and should soon pass MySpace in the U.S., it is not the largest social network in every country. The map above created by Vincenzo Cosenza resembles more a game of Risk, with Facebook sweeping across the globe from the West. Using Alexa and Google Trend data, Cosenza color-coded the map based on which social network is the most popular in each country. All of the light green countries belong to Facebook. But there are still pockets of resistance in Russia (where V Kontakte rules), China (QQ), Brazil and India (Orkut), Central America, Peru, Mongolia, and Thailand (hi5), South Korea (Cyworld), Japan (Mixi), the Middle East (Maktoob), and the Philippines (Friendster). Apparently, Alexa already thinks that Facebook is larger than MySpace in the United States. And Maybe it is, or maybe Cosenza’s isn’t using the best data. But I love being able to visualize market dominance on acountry-by-country basis. I wonder what the map would look like using comScore data, some of which can be found in our recent social network valuation model. Below is an interactive version of the map. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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| Scan Your Books And Search Them On Google Posted: 07 Jun 2009 09:08 AM PDT One of the most useful, if often-overlooked, features of Google Book Search is the ability to enter your own books and create a personal library which you can then search if Google has scanned those books. (And chances are it probably has). If you are trying to find a passage or a factoid you once read but can’t remember the book no matter how hard you wrack your brain, the ability to search your personal library can come in handy. Except who wants to enter each book one at a time? Now you can scan your books into your library on Google Book Search using a normal barcode scanner. I am not one hundred percent convinced that this is actually faster than simply typing in the title of the book and adding it to your library. It is faster than typing in the ISBN numbers, however, which is how Google Book Search handles mass imports. But if we are willing to convert our entire CD collections to digital form, it is high time we started tackling our books. Right now, Google is merely matching your books with the books it has already digitized for search purposes only. But once they know what books you own in print, the next logical step is to sell you a digital version of the book and related books on the same topics or by the same author. Once Google collects a big enough book search history on you, it shouldn’t be too hard for them to recommend new books to you which are spot on. Knowing what books you’ve read, will certainly help them in that regard. In the video below, Google’s Matt Cutts goes through the process of scanning your books into Google Book Search. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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A sad update to our 
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We’re on the verge of Apple’s WWDC keynote tomorrow morning in San Francisco. We’ll be there covering it live starting at 10 AM PST. After the usual months of speculation, there are two things Apple’s VP of marketing Phil Schiller is expected to focus on during the keynote: Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” and the iPhone platform. Obviously, the iPhone 3.0 software will be a big part of that, but most of those details were already given during Apple’s 
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