The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Nokia ‘Booklet 3G’ Netbook Details Coming In Early September
- Canpages Bets On Social Recommendations, Buys GigPark
- Fanbase Launches Wikipedia-Style Directory Of All Things Sports
- It’s Here! Pre-order Mac OS X Snow Leopard Right Now
- Linktive’s A Blast From The Past - A Social Network For Site Links?
- Virtual Gaming Marketplace Live Gamer Acquires Twofish To Boost Micropayments Platform
- TweetPhoto iPhone App Rejected Because Logo Resembles Polaroid Shot
- (500) Days Of Apple And Google
- Spreezio Helps You Cut Deals With Local Merchants Online
- The Funded Publishes Ideal First Round Term Sheet
- Twitt Sex: Because Everything Popular Needs A Sex Clone
- Daily Makeover Tries To Re-Create The Beauty Counter Online
- Ultimate iPhone App Organizer Hits The Web
- UpMo.com Offers Uber Personalized Job Searches And Counseling
- WISH 2009 Demo Event In Tokyo: 14 Japanese Web Startups Present Their Services
| Nokia ‘Booklet 3G’ Netbook Details Coming In Early September Posted: 24 Aug 2009 08:50 AM PDT Know what’s popular nowadays? Netbooks! Nokia is officially jumping on the netbook bullet train with the “Booklet 3G” — an Intel/Microsoft-based netbook that promises 12-hour battery life, a weight of 2.75 pounds, and apparently built-in GPS. The “3G” portion of the name indicates a wireless data connection as well. Actual specs and details will be announced by Nokia on September 2nd, but it’s believed that the Booklet 3G will run Windows 7. The 12-hour battery life is interesting, too, as that’s a full four hours longer than most netbooks currently on the market. It’ll be interesting to see which Atom CPU is used in the machine to obtain that kind of longevity. It may be a slower but less power-hungry Z-series CPU since the 10-inch Booklet will have a higher-resolution screen (likely 1280×800 or 1366×768). Again, not a whole lot of details yet aside from some teaser photos. We’ll find out more next week. UPDATE: Here’s a video, too. This thing’s looking pretty nice so far: Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.             |
| Canpages Bets On Social Recommendations, Buys GigPark Posted: 24 Aug 2009 07:03 AM PDT
The deal terms were not disclosed so it’s safe to say it likely concerns a fairly small acquisition, although we should note GigPark was bootstrapped by a mere $200k from its two co-founders Noah Godfrey and Pema Hegan. Canpages intends to integrate user recommendations into its online local search platform, and add a social media layer to its online and mobile products, so it was probably cheaper for them to buy the Toronto-based company outright than to develop all that in-house. The acquisition will also allow Canpages to incorporate GigPark’s functionality and content into its ImmersiFind platform, the company’s online search and SEO-enabled publishing technology that it licenses to some 15 directory companies around the world. As part of the acquisition, both GigPark co-founders and its Director of Technology, Paul Dowman, will be joining the local search player’s 700-strong workforce. The three men will not be relocating as a result of the deal. This isn’t the first acquisition announced by Canpages this month. Just two weeks ago, the company announced that it had purchased Texas-based ypOne Publishing’s PhoneGuide print and online directories in Ontario, resulting in a self-reported additional 7,000 new customers (advertisers) and an increase in revenues of $9.2 million. Canpages publishes more than 80 local telephone directories throughout Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, British Columbia, Northwest Territories and Yukon. In less than one year, Canpages says it has expanded its reach from 2 million to 8 million homes and businesses across the country, and claims its website Canpages.ca receives more than 3.5 million unique visitors every month with their local search requests. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors     |
| Fanbase Launches Wikipedia-Style Directory Of All Things Sports Posted: 24 Aug 2009 06:16 AM PDT
In its limited public beta period, Fanbase has already attracted over 500,000 users who have made more than 60,000 contributions according to the company website, which also reveals that there are currently over 1.7 million athletes and 20,000 teams in the directory. Fanbase hopes that, next to visitors, current and former athletes will contribute photos, videos, articles, roster and schedule information, upload commentary and correct inaccuracies, just as enthusiasts provide much of the information in Wikipedia and IMDB. Currently, 23 sports are supported - from softball to lacrosse to ice hockey - but the startup seeks to expand over the next few months to include individual sports like tennis and golf. Fanbase is also notably launching just in time for the fall sports season. The startup was co-founded by Nirav Tolia, a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur who led product review site Epinions (later Shopping.com) during the last Internet boom and ultimately sold the business to eBay. But not without heaps of controversy. As the NYTimes points out:
You have to respect Benchmark Capital partner Bill Gurley’s opinion on the whole thing: "I don't want to measure a man by one event when I've seen a hundred others," he told The New York Times. We’ll be right here measuring Fanbase too.
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| It’s Here! Pre-order Mac OS X Snow Leopard Right Now Posted: 24 Aug 2009 05:38 AM PDT
As our MG Siegler wrote a while back:
The price is actually $29, but the real question is: are you buying? Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors     |
| Linktive’s A Blast From The Past - A Social Network For Site Links? Posted: 24 Aug 2009 05:28 AM PDT
The focus is on a quality network rather than mass linking, no link loops and a ratings system. Interestingly this arrives at a time when there has been a lot of chatter recently about how people should start to go back to Blogs as a ’social network’ which users can themselves control. The trouble is, of course, is whether - despite working within the Google link-building guidelines - they won’t just get blocked. Has the world moved on to the point where blogs can never be a ‘network’? Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0     |
| Virtual Gaming Marketplace Live Gamer Acquires Twofish To Boost Micropayments Platform Posted: 24 Aug 2009 04:52 AM PDT Live Gamer, an online marketplace for players to trade and buy video game virtual goods, has acquired microtransaction platform Twofish, in an effort to boost its virtual economy. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. In conjunction with game makers, Live Gamer's platform lets online game players trade virtual goods they earn in games. The company’s latest move makes sense—as micropayments in the gaming world heat up, gaming marketplaces need to power their virtual commerce platforms. Twofish is a startup that basically powers micro-transaction systems for gaming companies. The company’s flagship product, Twofish Elements, provides several layers of service. The first is an accounting and currency management system that takes care of a game's virtual currency and its relation to real currency. The second is a catalog of virtual items that can be bought within a particular game. And the third is an analytics tool that lets publishers track the goods being bought within their games. Live Gamer, which was founded in 2007, is looking to be an all-in-one marketplace for publishers to allow users to buy and sell virtual gaming goods. The company also recently acquired Korean startup N-Cash, a global microtransaction company. Clearly, Live Gamer is looking towards micropayments as the future of virtual gaming and is creating a powerful payments platform and economy within its marketplace. Mitch Davis, CEO of Live Gamer, told us that the gaming publishers are demanding total commerce solutions and with microtransactions becoming the common payments system, these acquisitions help round out the company and keep a competitive advantage. Competitors to Live Gamer include PlaySpan (which also made a recent acquisition of a micropayments startup). As we’ve said in the past, micropayments are hot these days, and the number of players are scaling quickly, especially as gaming and social networks intersect. Live Gamer, PlaySpan and other smaller startups are wise to boost their offerings as bigger players like PayPal, Facebook and MySpace consider making a move in the space. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.     |
| TweetPhoto iPhone App Rejected Because Logo Resembles Polaroid Shot Posted: 24 Aug 2009 03:25 AM PDT
That’s right, this is what Apple told the small startup almost 4 weeks after they put the app up for approval: “We’ve reviewed TweetPhoto and determined that we cannot post your application because it appears to include features that resemble Polaroid photographs. Polaroid has previously objected to other applications that include features that resemble Polaroid photographs, and believes that such features infringe its rights.” Okay, but how did an app like Polarize make it into the App Store then? As TweetPhoto points out, they use the trademark Polaroid shot in their app logo as well, and furthermore, they are all about giving your photos that ‘true Polaroid look’. Compare that to TweetPhoto, which only features a mild resemblance to a Polaroid shot in its logo, something I only noticed when they pointed it out specifically. Either way you look at it, it’s ridiculous for Apple to block TweetPhoto’s iPhone app but not Polarize. Another testament to the company’s blatantly inconsistent policies, so here’s to hoping Phil Schiller manages to fix things over there. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0     |
| (500) Days Of Apple And Google Posted: 24 Aug 2009 02:28 AM PDT
The statements by the two to the FCC are full of information — except for the information that Gdacted, I mean, Google, declined to release to the public. We’ve already written about some of what Google likely has in its missing portions, but the most interesting aspect of it may be why they chose not to release those portions. The answer may well be because those portions go against some of what Apple is saying, and that would put both companies in a tough position. And it would put further strain on their relationship. This is a story of software company meets hardware company A few years ago, much of the tech world looked at Apple and Google as the two companies that could possibly take on the Microsoft juggernaut. Apple would take on Microsoft’s heart, Windows, with its OS X. And Google would kick out its legs by taking on Office with Google Docs. The two were perhaps best suited for such a fight because each had other revenue streams to sustain a war against Microsoft (Apple with Mac hardware sales and the iPod, Google with search and more importantly, search advertising). And the two grew closer together. In 2006, Google CEO Eric Schmidt joined Apple’s board. “Like Apple, Google is very focused on innovation and we think Eric's insights and experience will be very valuable in helping to guide Apple in the years ahead,” Steve Jobs said at the time. “Apple is one of the companies in the world that I most admire," wrote Schmidt in a statement. Alongside Schmidt on Apple’s board was Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson, who was also on Google’s board, and former Vice President Al Gore, who also was acting as a senior advisor to Google. Apple started launching products that were closely tied to Google. iMovie could export directly to YouTube. iWeb offered easy embeds of Google Maps and AdSense ads. Apple TV got a special YouTube channel. And of course, the iPhone featured Google search as the default, made it easy to access you Gmail emails in mail, came with a YouTube application, and had a Maps application that used Google Maps and in fact, was built with the help of Google. It’s also interesting to note that the all of the YouTube integration required (and still requires) Google to encode videos in the h.264 format because the iPhone doesn’t support Adobe Flash (which is how YouTube videos play on the web). Then there were the less obvious connections. Multiple reports now point to Apple asking Google not to include multi-touch support in the first Android-based phones, and Google complying, much to the dismay of many customers. And then there’s the unwritten agreement that the two sides apparently had stating that neither would hire one another’s workers. Yes, when you used to think of the relationship between Apple and Google, the term “buddy-buddy” came to mind.
In (500) Days of Summer, when the main character, Tom, asks his girlfriend, Summer, what went wrong with her previous relationships, she responds, “What always happens. Life.” The same may well be true for Apple and Google, though seeing as they are giant companies, it may be more appropriate to replace “life” with “growth.” While Apple and Google both benefitted from their close ties, both still existed as separate companies with their own agendas. While Apple was primarily a hardware maker, and Google an online software company, the two had few conflicts. But mobile changed all of that. The iPhone launched in 2007, and the first Android phone the following year. Still, the two companies got along just fine. Sure, Schmidt found himself having to exit Apple board meetings when the iPhone was brought up, but both sides clearly saw it as a small price to pay for Schmidt still being on the board. But then the iPhone exploded in popularity, to the point where it’s now Apple’s second biggest business (behind Macs, ahead of iPods), and it’s certainly not crazy to think that one day it could be the biggest. While Android phones haven’t exactly taken off compared to the iPhone, the platform is making progress and Google is poised to release another dozen or so Android phones before the end of this year. With all due respect to the BlackBerry (whose apps are generally considered to be sub-par), Android and iPhone are seen as the two mobile platforms right now. Some people are iPhone people, some are Android people. They are competitors. And so by extension, Apple and Google are competitors. Yes, they have different models for how they want to do things in mobile. But it’s not entirely dissimilar to the Apple and Microsoft battle in the 1980s. Microsoft built an OS that they wanted to get on as many machines as possible, Apple built a hardware and software combination to provide the best controlled experience. These days, in mobile, Google is taking the quantity approach, with Apple sticking to its quality approach. Meanwhile, outside of the mobile sphere, Google continued its growth despite an economic slowdown and decided the time was right to start branching out. And while it’s not ready yet, the announcement of Chrome OS is another element of its business that will directly collide with one of Apple’s. The impact might not be so big on Apple, but when so many parts of your businesses start to collide, one can imagine that it’s hard to stay so buddy-buddy. And the Chrome OS bombshell had much larger fallout. It intensified and perhaps even reinvigorated the FTC’s investigation into the relationship of Apple and Google, and specifically their interlocking directorates. And then Apple rejected (or “didn’t approve” depending on who you believe) the Google Voice app, prompting an FCC investigation into the relationship between the two companies as well. A few days later, Schmidt stepped down from Apple’s board.
But let’s not forget that before the whole Google Voice thing, Apple “requested” that another application Google made for the iPhone instead be made into a web app, Latitude. While it’s not entirely clear if Google submitted that app and Apple rejected/didn’t approve it, it really doesn’t matter. It is another example of Apple shooting down a Google app, turning one incident into a pattern. And that pattern points to something. (As does the fact that Google mentioned Apple’s “request” very publicly in a blog post.) As we have heard from multiple Google sources, it would seem that Apple is getting paranoid about Google taking over the iPhone. Maps, YouTube and Search were apparently fine, but with new apps like Latitude and Voice, it was certainly starting to look possible that eventually Google apps would take up the entire first screen of apps on the device. And while most companies may not mind that, and would let the customers decide, Apple is not most companies. Their stated reason for both the Latitude and Voice removals say more or less than those apps would cause confusion with consumers because they are similar to core iPhone functions (Latitude is like Maps and Voice is like the phone). And no matter how buddy-buddy Apple and Google were, no company likes the idea of another company controlling so much of its product. Naturally, if someone else controls your product, your product may be in trouble if they pull support. Or, and I’m just speculating here, maybe Apple felt that Google was using the iPhone as a gateway drug of sorts to give users a taste of what their apps can do, get them hooked, and then getting them wanting more with more functional versions of the apps on the Android platform. Just look at some of the examples, Gmail works on the iPhone, but it doesn’t have push support for some unknown reason. On Android, it has push support and better label support and star support, etc. Maps work on the iPhone but doesn’t feature Latitude, on Android, it does. Further, Latitude would have worked on the iPhone (and does through the web browser), but it’s a lame version. Android, which allows apps to run in the background, has the better version. Same with Google Voice, even if it was on the iPhone, it would not run in the background.
The real bottom line for all of this is money. On the surface, it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense why Apple would want to reject the Google Voice app. It actually would have made more sense if Apple worked with Google to integrate Google Voice into the iPhone, giving them more leverage over the carriers that Apple still very much relies on for its device. While Google Voice still requires the carriers for its functionality, eventually, it’s not hard to see it having a VoIP component that bypasses the carriers. As we learned from all of the open spectrum stuff, Google clearly envisions a future where there isn’t just a handful of carriers that control all wireless access in the U.S. Instead, it wants a more open system with many different providers. And there won’t be confusing and ridiculously priced voice and data plans in their system, there will just be fairly-priced data plans. Of course, all of that sounds great to us, but Google has an agenda too. They want all of this because they believe that easier access to the web means more people using Google, which helps their bottom line. So why wouldn’t Apple want to help Google in shaking up the system? Because doing so would hurt its own bottom line. Where do you think Apple is making all of its money off of the iPhone? It’s making it on the subsidy that AT&T pays them every time someone buys an iPhone. The first version of the iPhone didn’t have a subsidy, and at $600, not surprisingly, not as many people bought it. So Apple switched things up and agreed to waive the money it gets per month from AT&T contracts, in exchange for AT&T subsidizing each phone and paying Apple the difference. If AT&T (or any other carrier that eventually gets the iPhone) doesn’t exist with the outrageous rates they charge, they don’t pay Apple the huge subsidy. And if they can’t charge the ridiculous rates (which they wouldn’t be able to do and survive in Google’s dream scenario), they can’t subsidize the phone down to $200, and pay Apple the difference. If the phone isn’t $200, not as many sell. And so on… And so now we see a few different ways in which the Apple/Google situation has become complicated. And any combination of these can certainly sour a relationship — even one that looked so promising for so long. It would seem that the story has turned to one about growth, control, and above all, money. Those aren’t exactly the things that love stories are made of. [images: Fox Searchlight] Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors     |
| Spreezio Helps You Cut Deals With Local Merchants Online Posted: 24 Aug 2009 01:40 AM PDT
Spreezio is the startup that came out of that idea, and today Chipman is announcing that he’s not alone in thinking it’s a good one. He has just managed to sway Rich Garwood, a President of Verizon Wireless, into leaving the company he spent 20 years working for and joining the fledgling company as COO. Enough for us take a closer look at what they’re building, even though the service is still in alpha and only expects to hit public beta sometime next month. Spreezio basically wants to make it easier for shoppers to make deals with local merchants. Here’s how it works: you sign up as a shopper, and browse Spreezio’s product database - over 35 million items strong according to the company - to find what you’re looking for, using the category icons or search bar. Once you’ve found a corresponding item, you can indicate how much you’d be willing to pay for it or what percentage of discount you’d expect in order to get you to go out and buy it from the merchants who can supply it. After some fine-tuning, you can send out your deal proposal to the merchant(s) Spreezio will locate on a map, and once they get back to you accepting or rejecting your proposal, you can decide if you want to make a short trip and purchase the item(s) either way. All in all, it’s a solid idea: shoppers tell merchants what their buying terms are simply by clicking a couple of buttons on a web service, while local sellers get qualified leads and still be in a position to negotiate. Spreezio touts their service as a cure or anti-dote for the economic recession, which is evidently a bit over the top, but if it manages to get the necessary traction (which is going to be their main challenge) it could well be a big help for a lot of local merchants struggling to stay in business. And you can could a good deal on that flat-screen TV you’ve been wanting to buy, too. Demo video: Oh, and you also want to see this: Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.     |
| The Funded Publishes Ideal First Round Term Sheet Posted: 23 Aug 2009 11:40 PM PDT
Now, a lot of people, including prominent angel investors and venture capitalists, are starting to listen to him. Tomorrow Ressi will announce a new, basic term sheet for use by investors and founders. The goal is to protect founders and reduce legal fees, which average $50,000 or more per venture round. Earlier this month angel investor and Hunch founder Chris Dixon wrote a blog post requesting that venture capitalists start to use standard, founder-friendly deal terms for venture rounds. He set out the terms he proposed in that post. Said Dixon: “My preference is to keep all terms as above and only negotiate over 2 things - valuation and amount raised.” Investor Fred Wilson agreed with Dixon. In a post titled The Ideal First Round Term Sheet, Wilson said: “Chris laid out the ideal set of first round terms and I agree with them. What’s interesting is that Chris is a serial entrepreneur and I am a VC. And yet we agree on what the term sheet should say. That’s progress.” Now Ressi has published an actual term sheet that investors and founders can use that reflect those basic terms. The term sheet is here, and is also embedded below. The key terms include the elimination of participation with preferred stock, a 1x liquidation preference, and single trigger vesting acceleration on acquisition. What this means: VCs try to increase returns by asking for large liquidation preferences. A 3x liquidation preference, for example, means the VC gets to take out 3 times his/her initial investment before founders and employees get anything. So if you raise $10 million at a 3x liquidation preference and then sell for $25 million, founders and emplyees get nothing. With a 1x liquidation preference, the VC is only able to get the initial investment back before others take their share. More importantly, participation is eliminated. VCs often ask for this. What it means: Participation rights means the VC gets to take a pro-rata share of money in a sale even after the liquidity preference. With it eliminated, the VC has to choose - either take their 1x liquidation preference or convert and share with common pro rata. For any large deal, they will convert and be treated like the founders and employees. The single trigger vesting provision is also important. VCs like to keep their founders locked up so they have to keep working even after an acquisition. The provision, called double-trigger acceleration, usually requires a sale followed by a firing without cause. VCs want this because it’s easier to sell a company if the founders are locked into staying on. Founders don’t like it because it sucks. Most importantly, though, is the cost savings. VCs really need to move to a deal structure that doesn’t burn up so much lawyer time negotiating provisions that are almost never used. I could write 10 posts on how this nonsense works, and may in the future. A term sheet like this can be closed with $10k - $20k in legal fees. When you’re only raising $1 million, that’s a big deal. Also see the Y Combinator investment docs that they published a year ago. Their documents are ideal for small angel rounds, and strip out a lot of the stuff covered in Adeo’s term sheet here. There are some terms included below that are needed in larger deals and which aren’t absurd for VCs to ask for. So both documents are highly relevant. Start with the Y Combinator docs for your first early angel round, and move to Adeo’s document in your first real round of venture capital. We’ll highlight VCs that we talk to who indicate that they are willing to negotiate deals under these terms.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.     |
| Twitt Sex: Because Everything Popular Needs A Sex Clone Posted: 23 Aug 2009 10:14 PM PDT
The site is very barebones at the moment, but it appears that it is hoping to be the the adult version of Twitter. But rather than being one of the countless sites built on top of Twitter’s APIs, it looks like Twitt Sex wants to be its own contained site that simply mimics much of the Twitter functionality in its own contained environment. And it actually has its own API. Right now, there are only 2 users of Twitt Sex and creating a new account doesn’t appear to work correctly yet. But one of the first two tweets on the service shows what it will be about. It looks like the service will let you attach sexual pictures to your tweets, which then display in others streams. That should make tweet sex (the action, not the service) decidedly more visual and interesting — and should help with that whole 140 character limit thing (though being unable to test it, I’m not sure if Twitt Sex has that same limit). While the service’s about page has no information yet, oddly, its Terms and Conditions page seems to be from 2007. Also weird is that its Privacy Policy page makes numerous references to Twittr.com, which may look like the old name for Twitter, but it’s not (that would be Twttr). While you might assume this is just an old site that never launched, the first tweets are from today and yesterday. I’m shocked that it has taken this long for someone to come out with a Twitter for sex. But then again, there are plenty of people out there using the regular service for that purpose. Violet Blue wrote a good overview about it back in January in the San Francisco Chronicle. [thanks Thiago] Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.     |
| Daily Makeover Tries To Re-Create The Beauty Counter Online Posted: 23 Aug 2009 03:58 PM PDT  As facial recognition and virtual try-on technologies continue to improve, there is an opportunity to use this innovation for the cosmetics industry. Last year, we reviewed Tazz, a virtual makeover site that lets you alter the makeup and hair of a photo of yourself (or a celeb like Angelina Jolie). This week, startup Daily Makeover is launching a new version of its similar product, Makeover Studio, which could make the online makeover process even more detailed and easy to use. Makeover Studio, which can be used on Daily Makeover’s standalone site and is licensed to more than 60 beauty brands, including Avon and Mary Kay, and web media publishers, lets women upload a picture of themselves (or use a model’s picture) and then try on makeup and hair styles virtually. Women can try on specific brands of makeup in all different shades and styles. When a woman uploads the photo onto the platform, her face is instantly traced using facial recognition technology so that all the different application techniques such as a smoky eye shadow effect or a blush technique can be superimposed on her face in the correct area. Plus, women are able to try on different brands of products in each genre of makeup. So you could try a Dior blush and a Lancome blush and compare the looks on your face. The new version of Makeover Studio (which will be released later this week) includes new rendering functionality, visualization technology and face-tracing capabilities. The latest version has also added a more expansive list of makeup finishes, including satin, matte, metallic, shimmer, stained, dewy, sheer, and glossy in an attempt to show the reality of the finish of the makeup on a woman’s skin. Makeover Studio has added an option for women to adjust the placement and coverage levels of foundations, concealers, lip colors, eye shadows, mascara, and blush. The detail that Makeover Studio offers to women is compelling. You can differentiate between a lengthening mascara and a thickening mascara or determine how glossy a lipgloss is compared to a lipstick. Of course, makeup is a set of products that is difficult to buy (especially if the product is pricey) without seeing what it looks like on your face. Daily Makeover says that Makeover Studio’s technology can help bridge this gap in the online space for cosmetics, perhaps now allowing women to get the same trying-on opportunities they would find in a department or retail store for a cosmetics company. Currently on Tazz, you can purchase the cosmetics your “virtually” try on, which is unavailable on Daily Makeover’s site. But companies can brand the makeover application and let users email and publish their “makeovers” to social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace. There’s no doubt that buying and trying on makeup online is certainly disruptive to the cosmetics industry. But I’m still a little skeptical as to whether the online experience is the same as trying on a product at the beauty counter. When you try on the product at a beauty counter, you see the technique of putting a particular eyeliner or blush on, which isn’t shown on the Makeover Studio. It’s unclear if masses of women will trust that the makeover technology using virtual tools, such as Makeover Studio, is as accurate as actually trying on makeup. That being said, if you can combine the experiences of trying on and learning how to use a cosmetic product into an e-commerce platform, this could closely resemble the experience at the beauty counter. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.     |
| Ultimate iPhone App Organizer Hits The Web Posted: 23 Aug 2009 12:43 PM PDT
MG Siegler wrote about iTunes 9 a few weeks ago on TechCrunch, with the possibility of app organization, but it’s all up in the air right now. Overall, Movement is very cool. It provides a tool that many iPhone and iPod Touch users want, but under a cost of jailbreaking your iPhone or iPod Touch. Movement is developed by indie Mac developer Jeff Stieler. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.     |
| UpMo.com Offers Uber Personalized Job Searches And Counseling Posted: 23 Aug 2009 12:15 PM PDT With unemployment rates still high, the competition among online job boards is heating up. One startup is hoping to take a piece of the pie by offering a highly-personalized job search feature. UpMo.com has launched the Intelligent Job Hunt, a tool that determines a job hunter’s ideal career path and job opportunities based on an algorithm. Intelligent Job Hunt’s algorithm identifies and prioritizes job matches based upon certain aspects of a user’s career, including past, present and future jobs, network (i.e. LinkedIn) connections, professionals they'd like to emulate and personality attributes. UpMo also attempts to pinpoints the activities you should be doing and the specific job opportunities you should be pursuing to increase your chances of getting the job you want. Of course, the bells and whistles that accompany UpMo’s job search platform aren’t free. UpMo’s membership fee is $6.99 per month, whereas CareerBuilder and other job search engines are free. The algorithm itself sounds impressive and perhaps could be a powerful tool for those looking to get highly personalized job guidance, but needs to be tested further to prove its success in the space. And it’s a competitive space chock full of job search engines, including the fast-growing Indeed, Yahoo’s HotJobs (Which Yahoo may be abandoning) and Monster. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.     |
| WISH 2009 Demo Event In Tokyo: 14 Japanese Web Startups Present Their Services Posted: 23 Aug 2009 10:08 AM PDT
A service called Joker Racer emerged as the big winner of the evening, but the other presentations weren’t too shabby either, with some of them earning special jury awards from various Japanese media. A good number of the fourteen services are available in English (or will be soon). Here’s a rundown on all of the companies that presented at WISH 2009:
You can already register on the site but have to be patient until the official launch on August 26 when you want to take a spin. More videos can be viewed here.
The company also offers a cleaning service and online database of your clothes, which are each pictured in a grid view. Dressphile is considering to let users choose to open these personal “online closets” to other people to sell off unneeded clothes that way.
Tons of cool stuff the university created can be found in this bilingual PDF.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.     |
Billed as the web’s “largest almanac of pro and college athletes, built entirely by fans”, 
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It almost seems quaintly anachronistic, but 
I know, I know. I’m growing a bit tired of having to sift through e-mails from iPhone app developers who have seen their fruits of labor (
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The bottom line
When Todd Chipman, co-founder of San Jose, CA-based 
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Have you ever wanted to rearrange your applications on your iPhone, but ended up messing up pages of apps? Well, now there is a solution for that, and it’s called 
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