The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Twitter CRM Service, CoTweet, Raises Series A Funding; Launches Public Beta.
- OneRiot Real-Time Search API Now Open To All
- Live from London: The Europas Awards
- MG Has A Chrome Attack
- Indaba Music Improves Collaboration Through Revamped Digital Music Workstation
- Mollom Blocks Its 100 Millionth Spam Message
- Web-based Productivity Suite Zoho Now Integrated With Microsoft Access
- Why Chrome OS Now? Because Microsoft Office In The Cloud Comes Monday.
- Bing Comes To Hotmail
- BlackBerry Clearly Has Some Apple Envy Issues
- I Am Stunningly Uninterested In Diller And Malone’s Opinion Of Twitter
- Facebook: Less Errors, More Connections Please
- Twitter Gets In Your Face About Upgrading to Firefox 3.5
- Why We Need To Chill About ChromeOS
- Y Combinator Endorses Bump Technologies In The Quest To Destroy The Business Card
- WSOP Update: Calacanis Out, Sacks Still In (And Bails On TechCrunch Event)
- Cc:Betty Shows Some Twitter Love, Integrates Twitter Into Email Organization Platform
- Image Licensing Network GumGum Grabs $2.6 Million And Is Growing Fast
- Pre-order Your .CM Domain Now, Start Making Money Off Domain Typos Soon!
- Chrome OS Partners: Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments
- Su.pr Stumbles Out Of Beta, Officially Enters URL Shortening Wars
- 23andMe Launches $99 Kit To Spur Its ‘Research Revolution’
- Facebook Introduces The Fan Box. Take That, MySpace.
- Long Live 3.5mm: HTC Makes The Switch
- Why Google’s Chrome OS Bomb Has Minimal Fallout On Apple
| Twitter CRM Service, CoTweet, Raises Series A Funding; Launches Public Beta. Posted: 09 Jul 2009 08:49 AM PDT CoTweet, the web based Twitter collaboration platform for businesses, has announced a Series A round of funding totaling $1.1 million. The investors are Baseline Ventures, Founders Fund, First Round Capital, SV Angel, Maples Investments and Freestyle Capital. CoTweet helps companies and brands, like Whole Foods, Microsoft, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, and the City of San Francisco’s 311 manage their Twitter accounts as a marketing channel. CoTweet makes it easy to manage multiple accounts and supports group access to the same acounts, so a marketing team can split up Tweeting duties among themselves but still keep a unified public voice on Twitter. CoTweet also launched into public beta today — meaning anyone can now sign up for the service. Previously, CoTweet was an invite-only service, with invites being hard to snag. Finally, CoTweet has announced that it has integrated directly with Bit.ly, enabling CoTweet users to access the real-time click tracking and analytics from the URL shortening service. CoTweet launched in 2008, and is based in San Francisco. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| OneRiot Real-Time Search API Now Open To All Posted: 09 Jul 2009 07:58 AM PDT
The site’s API, which has been in use with selected partners for several weeks, will give third-party developers a chance to bake the results right into their sites or apps. One of the big developers that has already been using it is Microsoft, which has a version of its web browser, IE 8, with OneRiot built-in. Another partner that has been using the API is the desktop social messaging client Nambu. You can imagine that a lot of the clients that offer Twitter functionality may also want to offer real-time link search capabilities, which OneRiot’s API will be perfect for. Here are four of the main options that OneRiot will offer with the API:
PulseRank Search Results – a feed of search results ordered by relevance using OneRiot's PulseRank algorithm, PageRank for the realtime web. OneRiot Trending Topics – a feed of emerging topics heating up across the web right now. Simple Web Search Interface – allowing developers to provide innovative search integration with minimal investment. OneRiot CEO, Kimbal Musk, will be participating in our Real-Time Stream CrunchUp this Friday. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0  
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| Live from London: The Europas Awards Posted: 09 Jul 2009 07:21 AM PDT  The Europas, the tech startup awards from TechCrunch Europe, will be streamed live from this post from 6pm tonight London time/GMT (10am SF, 1pm NYC). We'll kick off with a startup pitch competition, followed by a panel of some of the leading lights in tech consisting of: our own Sarah Lacy, Jolicloud founder Tariq Krim, MyDeco's Brent Hoberman and Michael Birch, co-founder of Bebo. The actual announcement of The Europas winners will be from around 8.30pm GMT onwards. he winners will be announce first on TechCrunch Europe (RSS and Twitter). After that, well, a huge party. Over 300 people are attending from all over the European tech scene. Our streaming partner is TechFluff.tv. If you couldn't get to the awards, if you're somewhere in Europe working on your own startup, then tonight raise a glass, put the projector screen on in the bar and have your very own Europas awards with us. We salute you.
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| Posted: 09 Jul 2009 07:21 AM PDT
After Google dropped its Chrome OS bomb yesterday, the news that Google is working on a new operating system generated a media frenzy. Our own MG Siegler covered the news from all angles, and did a live interview on Attack of The Show (embedded above). As MG points out in the interview, this is just an entry point for Google (netbooks today, PCs tomorrow), and the announcement was expertly timed to take some of the attention away from Microsoft’s expected Office-in-the-cloud announcement next week. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| Indaba Music Improves Collaboration Through Revamped Digital Music Workstation Posted: 09 Jul 2009 04:50 AM PDT Music collaboration service Indaba Music has launched a new version of its Session Console, which is a digital audio workstation that lets musicians record, mix and edit music together from different locations. Indaba is a music community for musicians looking to share and collaborate with other musicians around the globe. The site offers artists a suite of online tools to help record and develop tracks in real-time. What makes Indaba’s newest version of its Session Console unique is that it brings high quality recording software to the web platform. Built on Sun Microsystems' JavaFX platform, Session Console 2.0 now allows users to add affects in real-time without effecting the audio. This feature makes changes appear seamless when testing out effects instead of creating breaks in a track. In addition, the console now includes a catalog of Creative Commons Commercial Licensed loops and audio clips that musicians can use and integrate into their tracks. Indaba commissioned professional musicians to create the sounds and then licensed the content to the community. The console also lets users remix and edit offline or online.  Thew new console is being launched in conjunction with a contest sponsored by the music group Weezer, where musicians on Indaba will have the opportunity to collaborate and remix a Weezer track that will eventually be recorded and produced. Indaba’s co-CEO and co-founder Dan Zaccagnino says that Weezer found the workstation compelling because of its ability to collaboratively capture the ideas of musicians in a rich format. Previously, Indaba’s console was being powered by Flash, which Zaccagnino says wasn’t the right fit as a platform for audio production tools. After experimenting with other solutions, he found Java and JavaFX to be the optimal language and application to power and process (from any computer) the high-quality recording software that is now run on Indaba. Indaba Music, which makes money through membership fees, has also updated its membership tiers to include a free account, a pro account for $5.00 per month and a platinum account for $25.00 per month. The paid accounts, which still seem pretty affordable for a fledgling musician, gives users access to higher quality sound clips, real-time editing effects and more. Earlier this year, the site launched a number of news features, including a new Facebook-like chat system, enhanced commenting within tracks, and a recommendation engine that helps compatible artists find each other, effectively enabling it to automatically pick out potential bandmates. Since January, the site has steadily grown from 125,000 users to over 200,000 users. Zaccagnino says that while the basic focus of the Indaba has been to help musicians collaborate and remix music in innovative ways, but the startup also wants to help with the next step beyond just creating the tracks. Indaba is also looking into providing resources for musicians to distibute and promote music that has been created on the site. Indaba competitors include Minimum Noise (covered here), WeMix, JamGlue and Indomite. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0  
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| Mollom Blocks Its 100 Millionth Spam Message Posted: 09 Jul 2009 04:27 AM PDT
Given that the product has only been out of beta since September 2008, that gives you an idea of just how much junk travels the digital highways. According to Mollom co-founder Dries Buytaert (also the creator of Drupal, one of the most used open source content management systems in the world), the solution is now used by about 10,000 websites across the globe, and the rate at which it is blocking spam messages from appearing on the Web is rapidly increasing. In a blog post, Buytaert says Mollom reached the 25 million blocked spam messages milestone five months ago, and got to the point where it filtered out 50 million of them only two months ago. The full scorecard, as publicly posted on the company website:
“Mollom is currently protecting 10,052 active websites. The average efficiency is 99.93%. This means that only 7 in 10,000 spam messages were not caught. Mollom has caught 100,537,961 spam messages since it started. Today we caught 297,061 spam messages. On average, 89% of all messages are spam.” In reality, the number of filtered junk messages is much higher, since he doesn’t take into account private servers it operates on behalf of larger clients and only counts the ones that get blocked on public servers. About 4 million of comment and post spam messages per month get filtered out of just one social network, the rapidly growing Netlog, with which it struck a deal two months ago. In aggregate, Mollom is processing up to 150 million messages a month, which translates to the company needing to handle over 200 million HTTP requests to analyze them appropriately. That’s a lot of viagra selling drivel for you. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Web-based Productivity Suite Zoho Now Integrated With Microsoft Access Posted: 09 Jul 2009 04:15 AM PDT Zoho Suite, a web-based software suite comprised of document, project and invoicing management tools, has rolled out another plug-in that allows integration with a Microsoft product. A few weeks ago Zoho launched an add-on that allows Zoho Office to integrate with Microsoft SharePoint. Today, Zoho will now provide access to Microsoft Access, a database management system for the desktop. Zoho Creator is web-based cloud computing platform that lets you build and run applications online. With the new plugin, Zoho will allow users to easily migrate data from Microsoft Access to Zoho Creator and Zoho Reports. Zoho says that when you migrate entire databases from Microsoft Access to Zoho creator, you are able to retain your database structure and data while being able to still create a collaborative database app in Zoho. Once imported into Zoho Creator, the entire application or parts of it can be shared with several users. Zoho continues to add innovations to its document management suite and includes easy access thanks to support for mobile, Google and Yahoo IDs and group sharing across different app features. Last week, Zoho’s project management application, Zoho Projects 2.0, added the capability to import existing projects from MS Project, Microsoft’s project management desktop software. Zoho faces stiff competition from web-based applications offered by companies with a vast reach (Google, Adobe, etc.) which is why integrations with a big player like Microsoft are integral to the software's success as an application suite. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Why Chrome OS Now? Because Microsoft Office In The Cloud Comes Monday. Posted: 09 Jul 2009 02:40 AM PDT
On Monday, Microsoft is set to unveil its plans to counter the attack Google previously had launched on it with Google Docs. Yes, Microsoft Office is going to the cloud. This is something which we all knew was eventually coming, and there is already some limited functionality, but the full details will pour out Monday at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. You can expect the new version of Office, that syncs with the cloud, and the ability to use it in the cloud without any software as well. Almost immediately following the Chrome OS announcement, Robert Scoble took to his favorite home on the web, FriendFeed, to have one of his, I-know-something-you-don’t-know “discussions.” During the course of those “discussions,” Scoble dropped quite a few hints about what Microsoft planned to announce on Monday, including “Diego, no, it’s one of Microsoft’s primary businesses. Did you know Microsoft has 14 billion dollar businesses?” Guess what that is? Microsoft Office. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together. And several bloggers already have. And it was especially easy after Scoble ruled out the new browser project Microsoft has code-named “Gazelle.” Scoble also noted that what Microsoft was showing off would run in browsers beyond just IE. So yes, it’s Office Web that was first talked about at PDC last year. And it’s possible that Microsoft could unveil that this new web-based Office will reside on the great domain, office.com. That site is clearly going through a transition to new ownership right now, and that would make a lot of sense. Office is obviously the 900-pound gorilla that Google is attempting to slay with Google Docs, but a 900-pound gorilla with a matching web offering will be a lot tougher. And that’s likely why Google wanted to get its own uppercut in first this week. And it’s a strong one. But now Microsoft is going to have to come up with some answers to how it can counter Chrome OS, rather than focus on talking about the new Office. [photo: flickr/tipiro] Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Posted: 09 Jul 2009 01:22 AM PDT
We’re not talking about a small number of users who will be affected. Hotmail is still by far the largest web mail provider on the Internet, with 343 million monthly users according to Comscore. Second and third are Yahoo (285 million) and Gmail (146 million). A year ago Hotmail had just 273 million users, so it is still growing rapidly. The new features let users search for and insert maps, movie listings and times, in addition to the restaurants, videos, images and business listings that were there before. And all of these have been upgraded with Bing functionality via the API. Some of these quick adds are quite useful, particularly the maps and movie listings. For the masses that use Hotmail, it’s also a great way to introduce them to Bing. Screen shots below: Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| BlackBerry Clearly Has Some Apple Envy Issues Posted: 09 Jul 2009 12:36 AM PDT
Until the very end when the word “BlackBerry” appears, I was sure this was an Apple ad. As a commenter noted on YouTube, this looks almost exactly like a cross between this U2 iPod ad from back in the day, plus a more recent Coldplay iTunes ad. Watch them below. ThisPlus ThisEquals ThisMuch was made of Apple’s relationship with U2 when it signed the BlackBerry deal. After all, the BlackBerry is now a chief rival of Apple since the iPhone launched. And, of course, U2 used to have close dealings with Apple, even getting its own special version of the iPod. Ads like this won’t silence that talk. But it’s not like BlackBerry hasn’t had Apple envy before. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0  
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| I Am Stunningly Uninterested In Diller And Malone’s Opinion Of Twitter Posted: 09 Jul 2009 12:18 AM PDT
She adds “Diller was pessimistic about Twitter's prospects for making money,” and:
As much as I respect Liberty Media’s John Malone and IAC’s Barry Diller, I couldn’t care less about what they think about Twitter and it’s business model (isn’t it obvious anyway?). I would even go so far to say that I would be infinitely more interested in what Twitter CEO Evan Williams thinks about Malone’s and Diller’s businesses, rather than the other way around. And I won’t even get started on Buffett’s ideas on YouTube’s business model. In fact, when I read the WSJ article I was reminded of my dad complaining about the music I liked in high school. The music he listened to growing up (probably played on a banjo or something) was infinitely more interesting than all this new stuff. Ah, the old days. Diller and Malone both preside over huge companies with a variety of assets. Some of those assets, like Ask.com and Expedia, would even be considered new media or Internet startups. But just like the truly old media guys, Diller and Malone are already dinosaurs in a fast changing world. They have no clue what Twitter is even about. So why in the world would we care what they think about its business model? A lot of people wondered how Google would ever make any money with a search engine. That problem was obviously solved. In any community with vast numbers of highly energetic and passionate users, there will be a variety of ways to make money. The only thing that can stop these services are high costs (YouTube and Facebook suffer from this) or someone building a better mousetrap (Facebook did this to MySpace who did this to Friendster). By the way, News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch isn’t impressed, either, saying that the site is “a tough investment to justify because it has not yet come up with a sustainable way to make money.” He also gave the exact wrong answer to two questions: “Asked if he was considering buying Twitter, Murdoch said, “No.” Asked about selling MySpace, he said, “Hell no.”" Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| Facebook: Less Errors, More Connections Please Posted: 08 Jul 2009 10:52 PM PDT One thing I’ll grudgingly grant to MySpace - the site works. That’s more than I can say for Facebook over the last month or so. In the past Facebook has had desperately slow page views and occasional downtime. But recently, the site has become almost unusable for me. And no, I’m not just talking about the abysmal messaging system that still won’t let me properly sort through thousands of emails. I’m talking about a complete inability to create new “connections.” My profile (no vanity URL for me yet) is near the 5,000 limit on friends, but it has a few slots to spare. And I’m a fan of only a handful of Facebook pages. But any time I try to add or confirm a friend, or become a fan of a page, I get an error saying “Sorry, you cannot create any more connections.” The fact that there are limits at all on connections is absurd (MySpace doesn’t have this limit, neither does Twitter or any other site I can think of). And the fact that I can’t make new connections even though I’m under the limit is worse. I know Facebook continues to grow at a breakneck pace - Comscore pegs them at 316 million monthly visitors and 122 billion page views. But the fact that MySpace, no slouch in the user numbers or page views themselves (122 million, 35 billion), hasn’t had these problems is worth noting. MySpace has a different architecture than Facebook, though. News items from friends aren’t pushed to my home page into one feed, for example. Regardless, Facebook needs to address this on a technical level, not a policy one. A Facebook employee, listening to my gripes, recently told me to switch my Profile to a Page, and they would transfer all my 5,000 friends and 4,500 or so friend requests over to that page as fans. But putting aside the fact that people may not be so happy to be labeled as “fans,” this still isn’t a good solution. I can’t have a two way connection with these people via messaging and chat. Facebook either needs to ditch the idea of friends entirely and move to a Twitter follow model, or allow as many connections as I choose to create. The company now has 1,000 employees, I’ve heard recently. One of those bright and eager engineers should be able to fix this. Am I asking a lot of a company that has grown faster than perhaps any Internet company in history? Probably. But if they want to be the next Google, it’s time to get organized. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Twitter Gets In Your Face About Upgrading to Firefox 3.5 Posted: 08 Jul 2009 09:40 PM PDT Woah, this is weird. Twitter has apparently starting promoting Firefox 3.5, which was released last week, to some of its users. Judging by Twitter Search, the banner began popping up around eight hours ago, and given how few people have tweeted about them it seems like they’re not being very widely distributed. The amusing thing about the banner is that Twitter’s site may not be properly detecting which browser their visitors are currently using — Chris Saad, who tipped us off to the annoucement, says he was using Firefox 3.5 already. That said, most of the other tweets about the banner do appear to be showing up to users who aren’t using the latest version of the browser. At this point it isn’t clear if this is a sponsored ad or more of a public service announcement. Update: It isn’t an ad, see below. If it’s the former, it would be a significant departure from the more subtle advertising Twitter has been toying with over the last few months, which has primarily consisted of small text blurbs in the right sidebar of the site. Twitter only recently began charging for some of these ads (or at least presenting them as sponsored links), and most of them are still free promotions for apps and services in the Twitter ecosystem. Even if this is a public service announcement, you can be sure that Twitter is closely monitoring the banner’s performance in anticipation of placing full fledged paid advertising there. They really wouldn’t be any more intrusive than the vast majority of banner ads on the web, but after years of going without any advertising at all, they’re going to take some getting used to. Update: Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has gotten back to us with details on the company’s motivation for placing the banner:
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0  
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| Why We Need To Chill About ChromeOS Posted: 08 Jul 2009 06:15 PM PDT  We at CrunchGear have been sitting things out today as our brothers at TC pant over ChromeOS, the latest OS based on Linux to impress, however lightly, upon the synapses of our country's journalistic elite. ChromeOS can't beat anything. In fact suggesting that ChromeOS will beat Windows or even OS X is like expecting Coby to come up behind Sony and Samsung next year in Blu-Ray player popularity. It just can't happen. As a wise man once said "Ain't the same ** ballpark. It ain't the same league, it ain't even the same ** sport." ChromeOS is a specialized version of Linux designed for netbooks. It is more like Android than anything else and, as Fake Steve notes, no one will use it. Oh, manufacturers will pay lip service to it and maybe someone will install it on a few million machines but it will be a drop in the bucket compared to the powerful web OSes called Windows 7 and OS X.
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| Y Combinator Endorses Bump Technologies In The Quest To Destroy The Business Card Posted: 08 Jul 2009 06:08 PM PDT
Bump Technologies is a mobile application developer that’s looking to offer a solution, allowing users to transfer their contact information simply by tapping their phones together. And things are looking bright for the small startup — the company has just raised a seed funding round from Y Combinator, and is quickly building up a sizable user base. Bump currently offers an application on the iPhone, with plans to release apps for Android and other mobile smart phones in the near future. Using the app is fairly straightforward: you launch Bump (as does the person who you’d like to swap information with) and tap your phones together. Once their accelerometers are activated, the phones both relay their current location data to the cloud, and Bump’s servers determine when there’s a match. Finally, a photo of the contact you’re pairing with shows up on your screen, and you confirm that you’d like to exchange data. It may sound a bit complicated, but it only takes a few seconds. Bump isn’t the first application to do this (Tapulous’s Friend Book has been doing this since soon after the App Store’s launch), but it’s a good idea nonetheless. At this point there are some obvious flaws — if you don’t have a cellular connection, it won’t work, though Bump plans to fix this is an upcoming version by also allowing users to transfer data using the iPhone’s Peer-to-Peer Bluetooth functionality. And for the time being you can only share data with users that have an iPhone and have the Bump app installed, which leads to a classic chicken-and-the-egg problem. That said, Bump is off to a good start. The app currently has 940k users, and 140k of them have already upgraded to the new update in the two days since its release, which means a significant number of them are very active. The latest version adds the ability to transfer photos along with contact info, and Bump will eventually allow you to transfer any kind of data — eventually, it will even allow you to transfer money, which could be huge. I’m glad Bump, as well a few other companies like Nameo and Me2, are seriously trying to solve this problem. But frankly it’s ridiculous that phone manufacturers can’t agree on a wireless standard for quick data transfer that just works, without any extra applications or an annoying pairing process (seriously, Palm worked this technology out ten years ago). It doesn’t look like that’s going to happen any time soon though, so Bump may well have a bright future ahead of it. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0  
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| WSOP Update: Calacanis Out, Sacks Still In (And Bails On TechCrunch Event) Posted: 08 Jul 2009 05:07 PM PDT Update on the tech gurus at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. We were tracking four players: Facebook exec Chamath Palihapitiya, Mahalo CEO Jason Calcanis, Geni/Yammer CEO David Sacks and former Yahoo exec David Goldberg. At least two are now out of the game. Jason Calacanis and Chamath Palihapitiya busted out on day 2 (apparently Calacanis’ ridiculous gangster costumer only took him so far). David Sacks is going strong into the third day with $116,000 in chips. We have no information at all on Goldberg (please let us know). Sacks, who won $25k in prize money last year, will need to stay in the game another day or two to match that previous performance. The total pot being split by the top 10% or so of players is likely around $50 million. Sacks let us know today that he would not be speaking at our sold out Real-Time Stream CrunchUp on Friday because, well, he’ll be playing poker. He requested that co-founder Adam Pisoni take his place on stage. We’re going to let our readers decide whether Yammer gets to send in a substitute in the poll below. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Cc:Betty Shows Some Twitter Love, Integrates Twitter Into Email Organization Platform Posted: 08 Jul 2009 05:06 PM PDT Cc:Betty, a free service that helps organize group email threads, is the latest startup to catch the Twitter bug. The email collaboration service is integrating with Twitter, so that users of the service can tweet in and out of a of the collaboration platform, as well as see each other's latest tweets. Cc:Betty routes, parses, and organizes email conversations in a simple at-a-glance dashboard so you never have to scour your inbox to find the bits and pieces of a long thread. If you cc "betty@ccbetty.com" on any email, "she" will create a mailspace, which is a webpage, for your entire email thread and will divide important things such as dates, times, people, places, and files and will format them all in one place. It basically maps out your communications for you in an easy-to-see format. CEO Michael Cerda says that Twitter integration was another way to help users organize all of their communications, including Tweets. Cc:Betty also recently upgraded its service with several useful features, including the ability to see maps, images and documents as large thumbnails in email threads, and a list of people in an email conversation. You can also filter content of the thread by participant. Cc:Betty has raised $1.5 million in seed funding, which was announced in June. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0  
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| Image Licensing Network GumGum Grabs $2.6 Million And Is Growing Fast Posted: 08 Jul 2009 05:03 PM PDT Image licensing network GumGum has raised $2.6 million in and extended Series A funding round led by GRP Venture Partners with First Round Capital participating. This brings GumGum’s total funding to close to $4 million. GumGum has been seeing fast growth since its launch last year. Measured as an advertising network (but for images), GumGum became a Quantcast Top 100 site, reaching 13.7 million people in the U.S. and 23.5 million worldwide in February. Currently, GumGum reaches 29.8 million people in the U.S. and 50 million people worldwide, according to Quantcast’s lastest stats. More than 2,000 Web publishers license images through GumGum, which allows them to pay based on how many people see the image or use them for free with embedded advertising. GumGum current clients include B5Media, gossip site DailyFill, Glam Media, MTV, TMZ, New York Post and Gawker. Sites contract directly with photo agencies, and GumGum keeps track of who is using what images and how many times they are viewed. That is what those Quantcast numbers are counting, thus GumGum acts like an ad network for images. GumGum’s founder Ophir Tanz says the new round of funding will be used to develop additional solutions around image licensing as well as drive new revenue opportunities to publishing partners.  Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Pre-order Your .CM Domain Now, Start Making Money Off Domain Typos Soon! Posted: 08 Jul 2009 04:55 PM PDT I distinctly remember reading this Business 2.0 Magazine piece published back in May 2007 about Kevin Ham, ‘the most powerful dotcom mogul you’ve never heard of’. If you’re interested in the domain name business (lovingly called the nasty cybersquatter rat nest by some), I suggest you read it in full. Here’s an interesting passage just in case you’re a little time-stressed:
Notably, this was after Cameroon set up its own scheme to make money off typo traffic: in August 2006, word got out that the operators of the domain name extension (state-owned Camnet) had wild-carded its ccTLD and was monetizing all the incoming traffic using ad-filled pages. Every single time someone accidentally typed in “.cm” instead of “.com”, Camnet was collecting. That was then, and this is now: millions of people are, of course, still mistakenly typing “.cm” instead of “.com” at the end of a domain name, and they’ll probably keep doing that for a very long time, too. But beer.cm, newyorktimes.cm and anyname.cm don’t resolve any more, although you’ll notice google.cm, microsoft.cm, ebay.cm and amazon.cm don’t exactly lead you to where you’d assume they would. And today someone pointed me to a page on eNomCentral stating that eNom and its partner, domain name aftermarket auction company NameJet, have exclusively started accepting pre-orders for .cm domains. From what I can gather, you can pre-order .cm domain names starting next week (July 15) until the end of the month (July 31st), free of charge. After this so-called land-rush period, the first auctions will start on Tuesday, August 4th and continue on a schedule that will be communicated via email with the participants in those auctions. Each auction will be 3 days in length. They’re not even trying to hide the fact that you’ll likely register them for the type-in traffic:
Note that eNomCentral customers who see their domains successfully awarded through auction will be charged $350 (including a minimum 2 year registration), so even though the actual pre-ordering is free, the registration is not. On the list of featured and popular .cm pre-orders, you’ll find recognizable (and trademarked) names like YellowPages.cm, Slide.cm, 37Signals.cm and Ask.cm. Very curious to find out what will happen to those after July 31st. Also wondering what impact the public availability of the .cm domain name (starting August 1) will have, if any. If I’d have to venture a guess, I’d say people who dislike people who are in the ‘domain name real estate business’ will have one more thing to complain about real soon. What’s your opinion about all of this? Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| Posted: 08 Jul 2009 03:59 PM PDT Google is starting to respond to questions about the just announced Chrome operating system. In a short FAQ today they talked about cost and initial partners. First of all, the software will be free, which was an easy assumption to make since it will be open source. Like Android, Google will not charge users or device manufacturers to use the Chrome OS. Yesterday Google said they were already working with device manufacturers to roll out Chrome OS devices late next year. Today they announced at least some of those partners: Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments. Acer and ASUS are the no. 1 and no. 2 netbook manufacturers worldwide. HP and Lenovo are also large netbook manufacturers. Freescale, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments are chip companies that Google is likely working with to ensure a good user experience. What I’d really like to know is if Google is working with these or any other partners to release products off the ARM or Atom processors. A desktop or even dual core laptop running Chrome OS would be a compelling device too. Google is clearly aiming Chrome at Windows, and focusing less on battery management (Android’s strength) to focus on robust driver support. Users will not be happy unless they can plug any printer, camera, or other peripheral device into these computers and have them work properly. The other focus is on speed, which is why Google is working so closely with the chip guys. This isn’t going to just be Linux with a browser bolted on. It will be (or should be) a compelling user experience with super fast boot and web surfing times. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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| Su.pr Stumbles Out Of Beta, Officially Enters URL Shortening Wars Posted: 08 Jul 2009 02:10 PM PDT Su.pr, StumbleUpon’s URL shortening service, has come out of closed beta. StumbleUpon, which was recently freed from eBay's clutches, tossed its hat in the URL shortening ring earlier this year. We first heard about Su.pr in March when StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp Tweeted about it. Su.pr, like other shortening tools, lets you shorten a URL and share it across Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon. The nifty part of Su.pr’s service is that it gives you a dashboard to help you keep track of how many times your su.pr links have been shared, across which services. You can see how many times each link has been clicked on and retweeted (along with the number of followers for each retweeter). It also lets you schedule shared links across those services for any time you want. Su.pr’s analytics are similar to those that fellow UR shortening service bit.ly provides, except that Su.pr is connected to website discovery service Stumbleupon, which gives each link an extra distribution push. Links can be voted upon by the StumbleUpon community (which the platform estimates as 8 million users), and if it becomes popular the link can become viral. For StumbleUpon, Su.pr is a way to seed the service with links people are already pushing out to their real-time streams. Of course, the URL shortening arena is almost over saturated with services. There’s the leader of the pack, bit.ly, TinyURL, Digg’s controversial Diggbar (which helped lift unique visitors by 20 percent), Awe.sm, Un.hub, Link.by, Owl.ly, Post.ly and many more. But Su.pr’s analytics could help the service to be a serious competitor in the URL shortening wars. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors  
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| 23andMe Launches $99 Kit To Spur Its ‘Research Revolution’ Posted: 08 Jul 2009 01:40 PM PDT
Still, it’s hard to really call 23andMe “affordable” for most people at this point. The price has come down drastically from the $1000 Michael paid when he tried it out in late 2007 (it’s now only $399), but that’s still pretty steep for testing that most people probably have a hard time wrapping their heads around in the first place. Today 23andMe has announced that it’s launching a much cheaper $99 version of its product as part of a new Research Revolution, which is meant to help 23andMe initiate research studies on genetic diseases that would otherwise require major logistical hurdles and funding. The effort is part of the company’s 23andWe research arm, which has the goal of building grassroots studies from communities of members who are afflicted by various genetic diseases. Here’s how it works: 23andMe has picked out ten different diseases that it’s looking to study first (the company plans to study more down the line — this is just a starter set). Users visit the site and “pledge” to one disease. The first disease to reach 1000 votes will be the first one studied by 23andMe researchers, though all ten will eventually be studied. Participants agree to complete a number of surveys, and users who have previously submitted their DNA to the service can opt-in and submit votes as well. Voting will run through September 2009. Unfortunately, the cheaper price comes with some downsides: you’ll miss out on a lot of the analysis that makes 23andMe really cool, like the ability to see your ancestry data, some of the site’s community features, and the ability to download your raw genetic data (which you could theoretically have analyzed again at some point in the future). What you’re left with are the site’s research reports, a list of risks for 100 diseases, and “traits”, along with some basic sharing and community functionality. You can see a full list of differences here. Finally, it’s not clear if this is going to work at all. This is a new approach to genetic research, and some science blogs believe that a 1,000 person sample size may not be enough to generate adequate data. Still, provided that 23andMe ensures that all patients are given adequate informed consent and the resulting data is considered valid by the scientific community, this could prove to be an efficient new way to conduct scientific research. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.  
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| Facebook Introduces The Fan Box. Take That, MySpace. Posted: 08 Jul 2009 01:34 PM PDT If you are wondering how Facebook plans to compete with MySpace as a platform for celebrities to connect with fans look no further than the just-launched Facebook Fan Box. It is a Facebook widget bands and celebrities like Lance Armstrong can place directly on their own Websites which show their Facebook status updates, how many fans they have on Facebook, an d a”Become a Fan” button which makes you a fan through Facebook Connect. The Kings of Leon have a Facebook Fan Box on their Website. Bands and celebrities are becoming wary of managing their relationships with fans on sites like MySpace and Facebook. Just the contact information alone is invaluable for most bands. Their online fans are their marketing armies, and smart celebrities want to control those relationships and the entire experience. The Facebook Fan Box lets them use Facebook’s ubiquitous sign-in and stream, while drawing fans to their own sites where they can centralize their online presence. Facebook doesn’t care as long as the social connections and messaging goes through Facebook. It is more than happy to deliver its stream and extend the reach of its members’ social connections beyond Facebook proper (which is what Facebook Connect is all about). But this particular move should be appealing to those celebrities who want to take back control of their fanbase from the social networks. Of course they can connect to their sites through their Facebook Fan pages as well. But whoever gives these personality brands more power will end up winning their loyalty, and all of their fans will follow. Is this the start of a federated MySpace powered by Facebook?
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0  
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| Long Live 3.5mm: HTC Makes The Switch Posted: 08 Jul 2009 01:32 PM PDT  Dongles. In-line adapters. Proprietary headset ports. If it's an audio port on a mobile handset and it's not 3.5mm, it's junk. As we declared back in May, we're done with all of it. Now HTC, sire of the T-Mobile G1, myTouch, and countless other smartphones plagued by non-3.5mm jacks, is done with it too.
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| Why Google’s Chrome OS Bomb Has Minimal Fallout On Apple Posted: 08 Jul 2009 01:16 PM PDT
While some have already talked about this a bit, I think main points have been missed. First, the obvious point: When Chrome OS launches next year it will be aimed directly at a market Apple is not in: Netbooks. Yes, Apple is likely to launch a tablet computer of some kind in the future, maybe next year, but that is not a netbook. That will be a touchscreen device that will undoubtedly run some kind of special flavor of the iPhone OS or OS X or a combination of the two. And I would bet that it will have stand-alone apps like the iPhone. That is not what Chrome OS is about. Secondly, while Google’s long term plan for Chrome OS is obviously to expand beyond the netbook realm and into more traditional PCs, that once again is unlikely to affect Apple. Apple makes computers that sell at high margins. This makes them expensive compared to some PCs, as has been talked about a lot recently thanks to Microsoft’s ad campaigns. Even now, in just about the worst economy we’re ever likely to see, Apple hasn’t changed this too much. Apple customers pay this premium because they think the melding of great hardware with Apple’s solid software (OS X and iLife) is worth it over a Windows-based machine. Chrome OS will directly appeal to those users who want out of the Windows environment but don’t want to pay the Apple premium. That is to say, it will appeal to the lower end of the market, which again, Apple doesn’t participate in.
A lot of people may not like to hear that, but it’s true. The trends don’t lie. And there’s a reason Apple dropped the “Computer” from its name in 2007. And Google Chrome OS is not a mobile OS, that’s Android. Assuming it can get on more devices, Android should be more of a direct competitor to OS X (I didn’t say Mac OS X) over the next decade than Chrome OS will be. Still, there are some good points to be made about the relationship now between Apple and Google. As Anthony Ha of VentureBeat wrote last night, this move may mean the end of Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Apple’s board of directors. (And Arthur Levinson too, the Genentech CEO who currently resides on both Apple and Google’s boards). When the FTC was looking into Schmidt and Levinson’s roles on both boards as a possible antitrust violation back in May, we wrote that we thought it was just a shot across Google’s bow, and unlikely to force Schmidt to leave Apple’s board. He didn’t.
Even though they’re probably not likely to understand too much about Google’s actual plans with Chrome OS, you can bet the government is quickly going to take a hard look at this relationship again. And that could well force at least Schmidt, and probably Levinson, to step down in the near future. And while Apple may not like that since both are seasoned execs who undoubtedly provide a lot of insight in the board meetings, it will be fine. And that just makes more room for COO Tim Cook to possibly join the board. As for Chrome OS and OS X themselves, I wouldn’t waste too much time thinking about it. While it will take several years for this all to play out, this is a direct attack by Google on Microsoft’s core. It’s perhaps the most bold move in a series of battles currently raging between the two (Android vs. Windows Mobile, Bing vs. Google Search, Google Docs vs. Office, etc). This is all about Microsoft, and not about Apple. And I don’t think Apple is losing any sleep at night over Google attacking what is also its rival. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.  
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Third, while Apple clearly is committed to Mac OS X right now, remember that it first and foremost makes its money off of hardware sales. This is the opposite of Microsoft. During WWDC this year, Apple kind of danced around a key statistic: that the iPhone OS is quickly 
But Google getting into the OS business makes things decidedly more murky, even if the two OSes (Chrome OS and OS X) aren’t likely to have much effect on each other. Schmidt already has to 
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