The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Singing A New Tune: The Imeem Music Store.
- Authorize.net Goes Down, E-Commerce Vendors Left Hanging
- Coming Soon: Even More TechCrunch in London
- Turn Web Content Into A Map With GeoMaker
- Brace Yourselves! “Asteroids” Headed For The Big Screen
- In India, Google Searches For Users With Print Ads
- First iPhone 3GS Jailbreak Hits The Web
- My Interview With Antitrust Expert Gary Reback: Google’s Looming Antitrust Issues
- Does Anybody Still Use Second Life? And If So, How Much Is It Worth Today?
- As The DOJ Pounces, Google Makes Book Search Even Better
- Google Voice Now Lets You Change Your Number. It’ll Cost You $10.
- Fitnio: Finally, An iPhone Exercise App That Gives You Control Of Your Music
- Dice Reports Murky Waters For Tech Jobs
- The Infamous 2009 LimeWire Pizza Fiasco
- Twitter Makes Hashtags More #Useful
- One More Thing: The New Facebook iPhone App Will Allow Video Uploads
- Google Blog Search Takes Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
- FriendFeed Makes Its Search Results Real-Time Too
- Google App Engine Stalled Out For About 6 Hours Today
- And Yet More Proof Of Why AT&T Needs To Keep That iPhone Exclusivity
- Twine Tries To Manage The Stream With New Coverflow-Like Design
| Singing A New Tune: The Imeem Music Store. Posted: 03 Jul 2009 07:56 AM PDT Does embattled music streaming site imeem think it can take on iTunes? For the most part, nearly every streaming song on the site has a download button which links to both iTunes and the Amazon MP3 store. But it is quietly testing its own music download store which bypasses iTunes and Amazon and sells MP3s directly. For instance, this is the case with some Sub Pop artists, such as Iron and Wine and The Shins. When you hit the download button on songs for those artists, a window pops up showing the album where that song came from with with the option to download the entire album or any individual song for $0.99 (see screenshot above). You can then pay imeem directly by credit card or Paypal and download the song to your computer. This imeem music store is obviously an experiment. The vast majority of songs still direct users to iTunes or Amazon for downloads, and you’d expect imeem to provide its own lightweight desktop client to manage and store the downloads, or at least place them directly into iTunes instead of a download folder on your computer. But it is also likely a sign of things to come. After nearly running out of cash because it was paying out too much money to the music labels for streaming rights, imeem went through a sever recapitalization. Warner Music ended up taking a $20 million hit to write down its investment and bad debt from imeem. Instead of walking away, however, Warner renegotiated its deal with imeem to get new shares without putting in any new money. Imeem is doing everything it can right now to cut costs and find new sources of revenue. Last week, it announced it will soon stop storing user’s photos and videos, an expensive remnant from its earlier strategy to compete with Facebook and MySpace as a larger social network. Now, imeem is focusing on being a music site. It was one of the first sites to strike streaming deals with all the major labels and for the most part has renegotiated those on more favorable terms. Its iPhone and Android apps, which also offer streaming music, are taking off and driving even more downloads. And that’s where the imeem music store comes in. Currently, imeem gets a dinky 5 percent affiliate fee for every song its users buy from iTunes or Amazon. As part of its renegotiations with the music labels, it is getting download rights along with its streaming rights I’ve been able to confirm. Instead of getting a few pennies for each song from iTunes and Amazon, imeem can capture the roughly $0.30 per song that doesn’t go to the labels. What is more likely, however, is that it is giving the labels more than the 70 percent cut they get from Apple. Even if it splits its share with the labels and takes only $0.15 per song, imeem still stands to triple its download revenue. Add in ringtone sales and its existing advertising revenues (imeem attracted 25 million unique visitors worldwide in May, according to comScore), and imeem might just have a chance to survive. But if it does survive, it probably won’t be because of its advertising model alone. It will be because the free music is driving enough sales of actual music downloads. Update: Imeem has confirmed that it is planning to roll out this store more broadly, but says that when it does it will continue to offer iTunes and Amazon downloads as an option. Below are screenshots of the new post-payment window for songs imeem sells itself and the regular affiliate link window which still pops up for most downlods: Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| Authorize.net Goes Down, E-Commerce Vendors Left Hanging Posted: 03 Jul 2009 07:49 AM PDT
It’s unclear when the downtime started exactly, but the consensus is somewhere between 5 and 7 hours at this point (11 AM Eastern), with e-commerce vendors desperately looking for ways to contact the company or get any first-hand information about what’s going on and when the problems will be resolved. Twitter, meanwhile, is buzzing with the news as the United States wakes up (hashtag #authorizenet). According to some threads in hosting forums, which remain unverified for the moment, there was a fire at a Seattle datacenter during this U.S. holiday weekend which caused a massive technical failure. We’re trying to get more information about the situation. Update: nobody is picking up the phone at the U.S. offices of CyberSource, the holding company of Authorize.net. Someone I talked to at their UK offices couldn’t help me and told me I should keep trying the U.S. office. Update 2: Nathan Cheeley writes:
Update 3: Authorize.net has set up a brand new Twitter account to keep everyone updated, confirming the cause of the failure was a fire but also stating an ETA for resolution is not available at this time. Update 4: a new tweet says backup was in place but that datacenter was impacted as well.
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| Coming Soon: Even More TechCrunch in London Posted: 03 Jul 2009 07:34 AM PDT
It's a rag-tag group that includes Craig Newmark of Craigslist, Meghan Asha of Nonsociety, Robert Scoble of everywhere, videographer JD Lasica and many other fine geeks you can read all about at the link above. As a Sarah-Lacy-bonus-feature I'm sticking around London an extra week, mostly to do some interviews for my book. But I'll also be meeting with companies, handing out an award at the TechCrunch Europas, and—yes, Arrington—writing some posts as well on what I find. We're kicking the whole trip off with a Tweet-Up this Sunday night. I think we've got about 50 slots left if you act quickly! Yes, there’s a fee to get in, but it comes with free drinks, food and all the Scobleizer you can handle. And, if that’s not enough for you Euro-techies, Intel is giving away a few laptops. (Intel is a sponsor for the trip. For more on sponsors and our ethics statement go here.) Discount code and other details are here. Hope to see you all there or at the Europas! Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0  
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| Turn Web Content Into A Map With GeoMaker Posted: 03 Jul 2009 07:25 AM PDT
While Placemaker does not serve as a geocoder and thus does not perform address recognition on street-level, it is perfectly capable of geo-extracting and indexing documents or atomic units of text, giving third-party developers the means to mark-up and index Web content geographically in a globally-aware, locally-relevant, and language-neutral manner (and Geo Microformats-compatible, too). But the process of parsing the data could sure have been made a lot easier, and if you weren’t a developer there wasn’t really any use for the tool at all. Enter GeoMaker, a fresh project by the hands of Yahoo developer Chris Heilmann that aims to make the whole process more user-friendly. Now it just takes three easy steps to copy-paste content either by directly entering data or by fetching it from a Web address and create a map based on the places the underlying software can identify. It even comes with its proper API. To see it in action, jump to this non-embeddable Flickr video that shows you how it works. To test it, I entered the URL for a post I wrote yesterday about the apparent geographical differences in terms of level of engagement with social networking services. I don’t have access to a free map developer key, or I would have been able to replace the YMAPPID in the embed code with the key and embed the map, but here’s a screenshot of how it came out: I can see a couple of uses for this, but it’s worth noting Christian is asking for feedback at this stage, which he intends to use to refine and improve GeoMaker prior to making it available as an open-source project on GitHub. (Hat tip to Programmable Web) Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| Brace Yourselves! “Asteroids” Headed For The Big Screen Posted: 03 Jul 2009 03:48 AM PDT
The object was to shoot and destroy masses of rock and the occasional flying saucer while avoiding smashing into both, so we suspect it will not turn out to be romantic comedy. Matthew Lopez will write the script for the feature adaptation, which will be produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura, the producer of both Transformers movies as well as the 2005 adaptation of the Doom game. Also wondering how you could possibly build a script around the simple game? Universal is just going to try and see if it sticks:
(Hat tip to The Register, which offers some advice for a story line and potential cast)
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| In India, Google Searches For Users With Print Ads Posted: 03 Jul 2009 03:09 AM PDT
Guilty of this hideous crime (I kid, I kid) is Google India, who apparently ordered some targeted quarter-page advertisements to appear in a variety of city supplements of The Times Of India, the leading English-language daily newspaper in the country. According to PluGGd.in - who we can also credit for taking the picture of the ad - this isn’t exactly the first time Google India has advertised services in dead tree form. They apparently also ran a print campaign to promote the company’s SMS search service back in November 2008. But this could well be the first time the Internet behemoth feels the need to pimp its search service in print. Or is it? Have you ever heard about other countries where Google advertises its search engine in printed publications? Let us know in comments. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| First iPhone 3GS Jailbreak Hits The Web Posted: 03 Jul 2009 01:43 AM PDT George Hotz, the 20-year old hacker who originally unlocked the iPhone, has released a jailbreaking application for the iPhone 3GS codenamed “purplera1n.” It’s currently Windows-only (Windows 7 not supported), and requires the latest iTunes installed, and an iPhone 3GS with the 3.0 firmware. Hotz mentions in a blog post that the jailbreak for Mac is “coming soon.” The iPhone Dev Team did release a unlock for 3.0 which did not work on the iPhone 3GS, but Hotz’s version does (although it doesn’t free you from your current carrier). Hotz goes over the process of the jailbreaking on his blog:
Hotz does warn users that you’ll need to backup your data just in case, and emphasizes that the tool is still in beta. Hotz also mentions that normally he does not make tools for the public, and rather have the iPhone Dev Team figure out the unlock process. Hotz continues by explaining that Apple will probably find a fix for the loophole, release an update, and he will go back to work on finding the next loophole. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0  
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| My Interview With Antitrust Expert Gary Reback: Google’s Looming Antitrust Issues Posted: 03 Jul 2009 12:27 AM PDT On Wednesday I spoke with antitrust attorney Gary Reback, the man who spearheaded the push to break up Microsoft in the nineties. The event was hosted by HBSTech at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley. If anyone in the world can make antitrust law interesting, it’s Reback.
We spent a lot of time on Google. His chief concern is Google Books (jump to the 30 minute mark), and he argues that a DOJ investigation is appropriate. I’m more concerned with competition in search and search marketing, and we spoke about this as well. One interesting insight from the conversation: I ask Reback if he thinks we’d be in a better world if Microsoft had in fact been broken up into two or more companies as was originally ordered. His response - “no.” The investigation and lawsuits themselves, he said, did enough to force Microsoft’s hand and allow browsers like Firefox, Chrome and others to blossom. We’re giving away 15 autographed copies of Reback’s book. We’ll determine the winners in the same way we did with Sarah Lacy’s book - retweet this post using the green button below. We’ll select the winners randomly from retweets that occur by midnight California time on July 3rd. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0  
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| Does Anybody Still Use Second Life? And If So, How Much Is It Worth Today? Posted: 02 Jul 2009 10:48 PM PDT
More on that later. Now that Linden Lab has been around for nearly 10 years, and with its product Second Life celebrating its sixth birthday since launching publicly in June 2003, we thought it would be a good idea to take a close look at the report and see how the company’s doing according to the analysts. First of all, you may be wondering if anyone is still using Second Life at all. The answer is yes, and users are very active on there. During the past 30 days, one million users logged in, according to Second Life’s own statistics. In average time spent per user per week, Second Life in fact trounces all other MMORPGs, including World of Warcraft and Civilization IV. In another testament to the service’s apparent stickiness, the number of hours users spend on Second Life has been increasing steadily and is currently at historic highs, totaling approximately 124 million hours in the first quarter of this year. More importantly, Next Up says in-world transactions have recovered after a significant drop in September 2007 - when gambling was banned in the virtual world - and has been steadily increasing ever since December 2007. Which brings us to the valuation, or at least the estimated value Next Up claims Linden Lab is worth after running a couple of calculations. Using publicly-traded online gaming companies as a proxy, Next Up pegs the median enterprise value (EV)/ Revenue multiple for that group at 7.2x off of 2009 revenues. Subsequently applying this self-proclaimed “conservative” multiple of 7x to the estimated revenue of Linden Lab ($100 million for this year), the current target valuation amounts up to $700 million. That seems like a stretch. In November 2007, the last time we asked ourselves how much Second Life is worth, we came out somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion. The current estimated enterprise value calculated by Next Up falls pretty much right into the middle of that range. Next Up defends the 7x multiple variable by referring to a two-year-old M&A deal. When Disney acquired Club Penguin for $350 million in cash back in August 2007, it paid out at least a comparable multiple based on Vlub PEnguin’s projected revenue for the year (between $50 and $65 million), despite the fact that it reaches a narrower demographic profile. But things have changed since then: stocks have tanked, valuations have dropped, the IPO market has pretty much dried up and VC-backed liquidity is at a record low. So that implies a major discount, with a valuation between $300 million to $500 million, which is decent but not spectacular, assuming Next Up’s revenue projection is accurate. Here’s what else Next Up says could have a negative impact on Second Life’s valuation: - the aging population of its main target markets (U.S. and Europe) and less of a presence in developing nations where its main target audience (people from 13 to 45) is quickly gaining in size. If you’re interested in the virtual worlds or Linden Lab in particular, there’s a ton of information and speculation about the market to be found in the report, even if we focus mostly on the financial side of things. To conclude, here are two charts from the report, one on the estimated valuations based off of different calendar years and one on the post-money valuations after the various funding rounds raised by the company. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| As The DOJ Pounces, Google Makes Book Search Even Better Posted: 02 Jul 2009 06:43 PM PDT  Google received some unfortunate news today, with the U.S. Department of Justice formally announcing the investigation of the $125 million settlement Google made with the Author's Guild to pay authors a nominal fee for copyrighted works it has scanned and made available on the Web. The settlement has drawn its fair share of critics, including Jeff Bezos. But Google keeps on plugging away, making its book search better and better. For instance, Google Books recently launched a plethora of new and innovative features to make the product easier for consumers to use, such as embeddable previews and better in-book search. Today, it added one more useful feature relating to search: a visual cue on the right margin showing the pages throughout a book where a search term appears. When you search within a book, a page appears in a window, with a scrollbar on the right. Little rectangles will appear in the margin beside the scrollbar to show you where your results are located. When your mouse hovers over one of the rectangles indicating where a search term can be found in the book, you’ll get a preview of the search results and the option of jumping directly to that respective page by clicking on the rectangle. With the previous search function, it wasn’t as easy to find the exact location of the results in a book. With this simple tweak, Google has improved the visual display of search functions, helping users navigate results in a more organized and efficient way. The DOJ will probably hold that against it. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| Google Voice Now Lets You Change Your Number. It’ll Cost You $10. Posted: 02 Jul 2009 05:49 PM PDT
The “Change your number” functionality, as spotted today by Boy Genius Report, is great news for users like me. Unfortunately, it will cost you to change it. There’s a one-time $10 fee, which in my mind is well worth it. Best of all, Google Voice will activate your new number right away and still keep your old one active and forwarding to the new one for three months. What’s also nice is that in picking your new number, you can search by area code and by a word that you want your number to contain. So for example if I search for area code 408 and the word “tuna,” I can get a 408 number that ends in 8862 (”T-U-N-A” on a keypad). Here are the details:
We’re still waiting on number portability (the ability to use your existing numbers as Google Voice numbers), but this is a nice start.
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| Fitnio: Finally, An iPhone Exercise App That Gives You Control Of Your Music Posted: 02 Jul 2009 05:45 PM PDT
Until the release of the iPhone 3.0 software update, developers were unable to access the phone’s music library. In order to play music as you ran, you’d have to first open up the phone’s iPod application, pick a playlist, then switch over to the excercise app. Once there, you could use your headphone’s multifunction button to execute some basic commands (next song, pause, and previous song), but if you wanted to switch playlists you were out of luck. Fitnio breaks down this barrier, allowing you to browse through your iTunes playlists and queue one up for the next time you begin a jog. It may not sound like a big deal, but it’s certainly a very welcome change. Unfortunately there’s still no way to jump to a specific album or artist’s songs, but developer Robby Walker says that those will be coming in the future. Fitnio is a pretty barebones app, without the nice visualizations you’ll see on RunKeeper (it also doesn’t have voice overs announcing your progress, which some people may miss). But it gets the job done, tracking your movements while biking or running using the phone’s integrated GPS, and it’s only a fifth of the price of RunKeeper’s Pro app, coming in at $1.99. Of course, Fitnio’s musical advantage over the competition will likely be short-lived. Given that all developers have access to the new features in the iPhone 3.0 software update, you can expect similar apps to include this feature very soon. That said, if you’re looking for a fix right now, Fitnio is worth checking out. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0  
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| Dice Reports Murky Waters For Tech Jobs Posted: 02 Jul 2009 03:51 PM PDT After months of dismal unemployment numbers, this morning’s continued growth in the unemployment rate from 9.4% in May to 9.5% for the month of June reinforces the fact that the U.S. is still very much in the midst of recession. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Labor reported today that employers cut 467,000 jobs in June, compared to 322,000 jobs in May. Unfortunately, the tech industry is still feeling the heat of the recession, with the rate of available jobs not improving much from the past few months, according to technology jobs site Dice.com. Tom Silver, senior vice president of Dice.com, told us this morning that Dice.com is reporting a 44% year-over-year drop in job listings for the month of June. May’s year-over-year decline hovered around 45%. And Silver also points to a rise in the Department of Labor’s unemployment rate for the “Computer and Mathematics sector,” (the area best associated with the tech sector). June’s unemployment rate for the tech sector almost tripled year-over year, from 1.9% in June of 2008, to 5.4% in June of 2009. While Silver says that the tech job market is certainly better than during the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, the number of job opportunities have remained stagnant over the course of the past few months. According to the TechCrunch layoff tracker, layoffs in the tech sector may be slowing down, which we reported in May. Layoffs are still taking place—the tracker has increased by 10,000 lost jobs over the past two months to a total of 340,000 individual layoffs. But there is a marked difference in the pace of layoffs from late 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, when layoffs were increasing by 100,000 every few weeks For instance, it only took three weeks for cumulative tech layoffs to go from 200,000 to 300,000 in February and five weeks for layoffs to go from 100,000 to the 200,000 mark before that in January. Though companies are cutting back and limiting hiring for the near future, Silver says that there are still certain jobs within the tech sector that are in demand. Developers who are skilled in the areas of virtualization and IT security are among those in high-demand. And Silver maintains that tech companies are always in need of talented and skilled programmers. But for all the marketing and business development folks out there, demand usually picks up in line with the economy. You can check out CrunchBoard for tech job listings. Photo Credit: Flickr/Lisa Brewster Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| The Infamous 2009 LimeWire Pizza Fiasco Posted: 02 Jul 2009 03:08 PM PDT
Then things really got out of hand. One of the Dovecote guys grabbed a whole pizza and tried to run away with it. A Limewire engineer pursues and pours beer on him:
We usually side against the labels on just about everything, but in this case we’re with Dovecote. Limewire is a mess and everyone knows it. Whatever happens in the future with the battle between users and labels, we know one thing. July 1, 2009, the date of the Infamous 2009 LimeWire Pizza Fiasco, was when it wasn’t just about words and lawsuits any more. On that day, the music wars turned humorously physical. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Twitter Makes Hashtags More #Useful Posted: 02 Jul 2009 02:14 PM PDT  You may have noticed that Twitter has started hyperlinking hashtags. Those are words preceded by a “#” which denote what the Tweet is about and makes it easier to search for Tweets about specific topics and events. For instance, try searching for #realtimecrunchup. Now that they are hyperlinked, when you click on a hashtag, you are led to the search result page for the specific hashtag. Others have been implementing this; FriendFeed (big surprise) has been doing this for awhile. Some of the Twitter clients, including the desktop versions of Tweetie and Seesmic Desktop also provide hyperlinks to hashtags. For Twitter, search is a navigation tool, and this functionality is yet one more way to allow people to easily discover new Tweets outside their group of followers. This trend started when they added the search box to everyone’s home page last April. Real-time search is heating up. Just earlier today, FriendFeed launched its own real-time search. By linking to hashtags, Twitter is giving people another entry point into its existing search. Now, if you could only track mentions of specific hashtags over time. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| One More Thing: The New Facebook iPhone App Will Allow Video Uploads Posted: 02 Jul 2009 01:37 PM PDT
Hewitt just started working on the feature yesterday, thinking it would be something that would come in the next release, after this one. But he was surprised at how quickly he was able to get it up and running and so he tweeted out today, “3GS video uploading for the Facebook iPhone app is a go — didn’t plan to include it in the 3.0 update, but it was really easy to code.” This is excellent news as it gives iPhone 3GS owners another easy outlet to upload video to. We’ve already detailed how simple it is to upload to YouTube from the device, and how doing so from the new Kyte app gives you great video quality. The iPhone 3GS is simply awesome as a mobile video device, and Facebook is an excellent platform for sharing video amongst friends. Additionally, we’ve heard talk the new iPhone 3.1 beta software which was just released to developers the other day, has some new functionality that should make video uploads even easier. Apparently, the device will be able to change the quality of the video getting uploaded based on your available bandwidth to optimize for the uploads. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| Google Blog Search Takes Two Steps Forward, One Step Back Posted: 02 Jul 2009 12:51 PM PDT
That said, it has been missing some key features. For one, there hasn’t been a good way to track breaking news stories as they happen — generally stories only pop up as they gain momentum and are written about by multiple sites, which can take quite a while (relatively speaking). There also hasn’t been a way to subscribe to a feed of the latest stories via RSS, which nearly every other similar site offers. Today, Blog Search is finally adding these features. Each feed now offers its own RSS/Atom feeds, as well as an iGoogle gadget that integrates new top stories into your Google homepage. Finally, the site has added sections for both ‘Hot Queries”, which shows the most popular search terms, and “Latest Posts”, an unfiltered view of the latest blog posts indexed by the search engine. These last two features could be quite useful for tracking breaking news, especially given how fast Blog Search is at finding new blog posts. Unfortunately, they’re not quite there yet. My biggest gripe is that the ‘hot queries’ and ‘latest posts’ sections are not category-specific. In other words, when I’m browsing through the Technology section of Blog Search, I’m still being shown new posts about McDonalds, Exxon, and Asteroids. The Hot Queries section is equally irrelevant. This is especially strange given that Google is already categorizing the blog posts into different sections based on their topic, and I’m hoping that Google will at least offer a filtered view as an option. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| FriendFeed Makes Its Search Results Real-Time Too Posted: 02 Jul 2009 12:23 PM PDT
Enter any query into FriendFeed’s search box and you’ll see a constantly updating stream of items related to it. It works for advanced searches too. Best of all, it also searches through comments left below items. And these results can even be embedded in other blogs, as you can see right now on the FriendFeed blog (or below in this post). It will be interesting to see if FriendFeed uses this functionality in a business sense. Given that it is now possibly the most compelling way to in real-time search streams of hugely popular services like Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, various blogs — and all the comments related to those — a paid search model would seem to be an obvious choice. So far, FriendFeed has shied away from any business model, but has shown possible hints of what’s to come with its “Shameless Self-Promotion” banners. And FriendFeed still has a few more things in store, including, yes, track for topics (it already has it for people and groups). “We’re also working on allowing you to subscribe to saved searches, add them to your friend lists, and even get notifications based on search keywords. So stay tuned,” writes Jim Norris today. The timing of this announcement is also perfect considering our own real-time event is coming up a week from tomorrow. And yes, FriendFeed will be a part of it, along with the other major players in the field. Below is an example real-time search embed to see what people are saying about TechCrunch in real-time. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Google App Engine Stalled Out For About 6 Hours Today Posted: 02 Jul 2009 11:06 AM PDT
That’s a long time for any service to be broken, but especially one that is the backbone for many startups’ web apps. What’s worse is that while Google is updating the Google Groups thread, the actual App Engine Status page has been down the entire time as a result of the problems, so people are going there for updates and seeing nothing. The last update from Google came about an hour ago:
Obviously, the natives are getting restless on Twitter. This outage follows the popular hosting service Rackspace experiencing some rare downtime earlier this week. Update: And it looks like this downtime is even hampering the development of Chrome for the Mac. Here’s was lead developer Mike Pinkerton just tweeted out: “Popup blocking UI is done, but appspot apps are all horked so I can’t get it reviewed. #chrome” Update 2: 6 hours later, it looks like things are finally back in working order. The latest update from Google in the Google Group thread:
[thanks Adam and everyone else who sent this in] Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| And Yet More Proof Of Why AT&T Needs To Keep That iPhone Exclusivity Posted: 02 Jul 2009 10:39 AM PDT
The iPhone 3GS’s launch gave AT&T its best sales day at its retail stores — ever, its second largest traffic day at retails stores, the most transactions it has ever processed in a day, the most orders through att.com in a single day ever and the biggest features sales day at att.com ever. Oh, and it led to the most upgrade eligibility checks ever, which is not surprising at all, though most were probably disappointed. What’s crazy about all this though is that while many people were expecting the iPhone 3GS launch to pale in comparison to the iPhone 3G launch, it actually exceeded it in just about every way when it came to actual sales (at least through AT&T’s stores and online). The lines may have not been as long at stores because of pre-sales, but sales overall exceeded the 2008 launch day numbers, and all of the heavy holiday shopping times. And apparently iPhone 3GS sales exceeded the iPhone 3G launch day sales by noon Central time. AT&T’s exclusive contract with Apple for the iPhone is set to expire next year. There has been a lot of talk about AT&T wanting to extend the deal for at least another year, but there has also been talk of Apple flirting with rival Verizon. It seems pretty clear that Apple is getting up to the limit of where it take the iPhone with AT&T. The biggest complaint about the device now seems to be the service provider. And if it can sell millions of units in just days on just one provider, imagine what it can do if it were on two — or better, all of them. Below find the memo. You’ll also note that on the day of Michael Jackson’s death, AT&T saw more text messages sent than ever before — exceeding even that of American Idol finales and New Year’s Eve. That’s pretty insane, especially considering what a rip-off text messages are.
[photo: flickr/Jen SFO-BCN] Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| Twine Tries To Manage The Stream With New Coverflow-Like Design Posted: 02 Jul 2009 10:24 AM PDT What is the best way to sift through a stream of information? The list view seems to be the most popular because it is information-dense and easy to scan, but it can be overwhelming. More visually appealing ways to manage data are needed. Twine, a site which lets you collect and subscribe to different interest feeds, just introduced a new way to wade through its streams. The new Flash visualization presents your stream of shared links as a deck of headlines which you can shuffle through (see video below). A slider along the bottom, lets you cycle through the deck by time, and arrows underneath let you move sequentially, or you can just click on a deck in the background to move it forward. If you want to learn more, you can flip each deck to read a snippet and link to the full detail page. The semantic tags associated with each item also show up on the side and can be clicked on to navigate through the deck. It feels like Coverflow on Apple’s iTunes, except that you navigate through the deck front to back instead of side to side. It also reminds me of the deck metaphor on the new Palm Pre. I can definitely see this as a good UI for mobile apps as well where screen size is more constrained. Don’t worry, though, the regular list view is still an option. My only problem with the visualization is that it takes a while to load (Flash, why do you torture me?). But other than that, it makes sifting through each feed seem more like channel-surfing in the way that SearchMe does for search results and music search or StumbleVideo does for Web videos. But there must be a better way to wade through the stream. What is it? Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 
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