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- IBM Files Patent For Geek Couch Potato Dream: A TV Remote That Tweets
- TrickleStar TV and PC Power Controllers Kill Energy Vampires
- Security Snafu: Elance Sends Private Messages All Over The Place
- VaynerMedia Is Bringing Sports Chants To Twitter
- Another Exploding iPhone Case Surfaces In Belgium
- Investor Group Makes Play For Skype
- Spotify Gets The Green Light For Its iPhone App
- Chinese iPhone Gets Official In English. China Unicom Nearly Doubles AT&T’s Subscriber Base.
- TokBox Adds Document Collaboration Powered By EtherPad
- A Look At Facebook’s Reach Worldwide
- Nine Startups Present To The DC Tech Community At TECH Cocktail
- OneRiot Fights Its Way To A New $7 Million Round
- MOG Raises Another $5 Million As Traffic Nearly Doubles Since January
- Microsoft Ends Bing Promotion Early After Hitting Cashback Limit
- Now That AdMob Bought AdWhirl, Will Anybody Trust It?
- Worth The Wait: New Facebook iPhone App Sneaks In Some Last Minute Changes
- Facebook 3.0 For iPhone Now Available On The App Store
- AdMob Acquires AdWhirl
- 25 Years Later, First Registered Domain Name Changes Hands
- iBing? Microsoft Wants You To Build An iPhone App For That
- isocket Raises $2 Million Series A With Some Big Names
- Translate Google Docs And Share Them Around The World
- Facebook Bows to Canadian Privacy Concerns, Will Change The Way All Apps Access Social Data
- Nokia N900 and Maemo 5 Get Official, Launching In October
| IBM Files Patent For Geek Couch Potato Dream: A TV Remote That Tweets Posted: 28 Aug 2009 07:22 AM PDT
The interesting part of the patent filing, which was submitted by IMB engineers last year but only surfaced online a few months ago:
Imagine that: tuning in to Mad Men from the couch and letting your blog subscribers, Facebook friends or Twitter followers instantly know what you’re watching, even including a snapshot of the lovely Christina Hendricks, all by using your network-enabled remote controller. According to the patent filing, the remote would even allow a viewer to not only communicate with a blogging service but also display responses to and from other bloggers with whom the viewer is communicating. That’s right, that means your buddies could be sending you an @reply or direct message with their opinions on the show (and the actress) and you’d be able to view the responses simply by using that super remote of yours. Sign me up for one! Screenshots from the filing: Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco           |
| TrickleStar TV and PC Power Controllers Kill Energy Vampires Posted: 28 Aug 2009 06:55 AM PDT  While it is well known that I once did a burlesque show under the name TrickleStar in Weimar Germany, many of you don't know that TrickleStar is also a system for shutting down idling hardware next to your TV or PC. I'm here to tell you, my kleine Kuchen, that it's really great. Think about your own sad situation: you have a computer or TV that you turn off. The constellation of devices that orbit these central devices remain on or in a standby state. The TrickleStars solve that problem by turning everything off when the main items are off.TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Security Snafu: Elance Sends Private Messages All Over The Place Posted: 28 Aug 2009 06:33 AM PDT
The company has been alerted to the problem by members since the security breach became apparent a couple of hours ago, but Elance has apparently not dealt with it yet nor responded to any inquiries, says Jafri and numerous others in the website forums. We’ve contacted the Mountain View company as well but haven’t heard back so far. Something’s seriously wrong though. Members are complaining in the forums (screenshots below) that they’ve received over 50 e-mails so far that were not meant for them. Several of them reportedly contain sensitive data from clients, like login details and private information about their accounts and activities. Elance members reading this: you might want to verify what you’ve sent your clients the last few days and change any login credentials you’ve passed on. Who knows who else has been reading along. (Thanks for alerting us, Salma) Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| VaynerMedia Is Bringing Sports Chants To Twitter Posted: 28 Aug 2009 06:00 AM PDT
Even if you’re not into sports, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve heard that chant before. And there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be seeing a lot more of it if Gary and AJ Vaynerchuk get their way. That’s because they want to start a trend that every New York Jets fan uses the #J_E_T_S_JETS_JETS_JETS hashtag on Twitter before games and after every touchdown. And guess who is behind the idea: The New York Jets. The Vaynerchuk’s VaynerMedia does brand consulting in the online space, and one of their clients happens to be the Jets. So they pitched the idea to the team and the team agreed to promote the idea before the first regular season game on September 7. Sports chants are an odd thing because thousands of complete strangers come together to say them in unison. Usually, that happens in a stadium or arena, but really, the entire idea isn’t that different from Twitter itself. I know that I still do some of the Michigan Wolverine chants even when I’m sitting at home watching a game by myself (yes, even during last year’s miserable football season), so why not do them on Twitter? Before the Twitter hashtag chant comes into play, the Jets are using Twitter another way. Tomorrow, before the final pre-season game, the Jets will be giving away tickets to each Jets player who tweets. These tickets can be given to fans of the players’ choosing. The idea is to apparently get the players more involved in the online community. In terms of sports clients, so far VaynerMedia has signed up Kerry Rhodes of the Jets and former NBA star Jalen Rose (also a Michigan Wolverine), alongside the Jets. They are working on some other sports deals right now, and hope to get a few more signed shortly. You can read more about it on the Jets’ Twitter page. And watch the video below to see the chant in action. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Another Exploding iPhone Case Surfaces In Belgium Posted: 28 Aug 2009 03:54 AM PDT  A 15-year old Belgian by the name of Salvatore is the latest victim in a series of mysterious iPhone explosions that have captured the attention of France's and the European Commissions' consumer affair watchdogs. Details are scarce for the moment, but according to local news reports the teenager was holding his iPhone in his hand, about to make a call, when the device suddenly 'imploded'. The incident didn't cause any serious injuries but reportedly gave Salvatore a headache for a couple of days. He has been promised a free replacement unit by Apple but hasn't yet received a new phone. There have earlier been numerous reports of exploding iPhone devices in the United States, United Kingdom and France, with most recently about ten cases having emerged in France where the official competition, consumer affairs and fraud watchdog DGCCRF has now launched an investigation to find out whether the popular Apple smartphone could pose a threat to consumers. Apple, which has sold 26 million iPhones and 200 million iPods to date, said it had been informed of the French cases, but would not comment until it had closely examined the damaged phones.TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Investor Group Makes Play For Skype Posted: 28 Aug 2009 02:47 AM PDT
Investors in the proposed purchase may include newly-formed Andreesen Horowitz, Index Ventures (who were early investors in Skype before the ebay acquisition), and one or more multi-billion dollar private equity firms. eBay, which announced earlier this year that they would be spinning off the company in an initial public offering in 2010, is said to be looking for $2 billion or more for Skype. Companies quite often talk about IPOs (and even actually file) to generate acquisition buzz. The Andreeseen Horowitz fund can make single commitments of up to $50 million, so it’s clear a large private equity fund (or two) would need to be involved in the deal as well. It isn’t clear if current Skype CEO Josh Silverman would continue to lead the company after any acquisition. Sources we’ve spoken with have said he is generally well thought of both within Skype/eBay as well as the possible investors. Skype, under Silverman, grew revenue to $551 million last year, and eBay has said it expects the company to top $1 billion in revenue in 2011. Presumably, the investor group, if successful in acquiring Skype, would run it privately and eventually prepare it for an initial public offering. Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, were also reportedly in talks with several private equity firms earlier this year to make a bid for the company. Recent news that Skype is now in litigation with a company controlled by those founders over key Skype technology only complicates the picture further. eBay acquired Skype in 2005 for $4.1 billion, although about $1 billion of that, an earnout, was never paid. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Spotify Gets The Green Light For Its iPhone App Posted: 28 Aug 2009 02:46 AM PDT
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Chinese iPhone Gets Official In English. China Unicom Nearly Doubles AT&T’s Subscriber Base. Posted: 28 Aug 2009 02:27 AM PDT
Some details not revealed yesterday include that this is a 3-year deal between China Unicom and Apple, and that the first iPhones will ship sometime in Q4 of this year (the report yesterday had said October, which is certainly a possibility). Not stated is whether this will be the iPhone 3GS or the older iPhone 3G [Update below]. Recent reports had indicated that either way, the device would not come with WiFi functionality (which had supposedly long been one sticking point between Apple and the Chinese carriers). China Unicom is the second largest mobile provider in China, behind China Mobile. But even as the number two in China, that still makes it the third largest mobile provider in the world. Or think about it this way: While the U.S. has something like 270 million cellular subscribers total across all the carriers, China Unicom has over 140 million alone. For comparison’s sake, AT&T has just about half of that, around 78 million. If Apple can capture a significant percentage of the China Unicom subscribers, and possibly pull in some from other carriers (China has around 700 million total cellular subscribers), that will be huge. While the iPhone is now in over 80 countries, sales are still dominated by the U.S. which accounts for just about half of the units. Success in China could obviously change that, big time. Update: One of our commenters, Snake Chen, appears to be reporting live from the press conference in China. According to him, China Unicom will get both the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 3G, just like we have in the U.S. Here’s his coverage in Chinese, and some pictures. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| TokBox Adds Document Collaboration Powered By EtherPad Posted: 28 Aug 2009 01:49 AM PDT
Essentially, you start a call on TokBox and invite up to 20 friends or coworkers to the call. You then put in your URL for EtherPad in an existing URL pad. After speaking with TokBox CEO Ian Small, TokBox wants to focus more on collaboration, and they have started a great relationship with EtherPad. Small also mentioned that EtherPad will be integrating TokBox into their service in the next couple of weeks. According to Small, EtherPad will be able to collaborate on documents with the addition of voice and video chatting powered by TokBox. It’s still unclear what TokBox’s business model is, but they’re possibly positioned well because they are not limiting their service to an operating system, but just to the browser. TokBox also recently laid off 50% of their engineering team, and all the companies founders have left the company. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| A Look At Facebook’s Reach Worldwide Posted: 27 Aug 2009 11:38 PM PDT Everyone knows that Facebook has become absolutely massive, but it’s easy to lose sight of just how big a number like 250 million is. Buzzpoint, a social media marketing firm based out of Los Angeles, has put together an impressive visualization that shows off just how large Facebook has grown. The company has estimated the current and past Facebook usage statistics using available data and plotted a number of graphs tracking its progress over the last three years. I’ve broken the image (which is quite massive on its own) into a few chunks below, and you can download the whole thing here. Among the more interesting stats: as of July 15 2009, Facebook had 250 million active users, which would make it the fourth most popular country in the world. Facebook’s top two traffic contributors are the US (by a large margin) and the UK, but in third is Turkey, which didn’t even have a localized version until last year (though English is fairly common there). In terms of Facebook users as a percentage of a nation’s population, small countries like Iceland and Norway lead the way, each of which has over 40% of their populations on the site. Of the larger nations, Canada is on top, with around 34.37% of its 33.6 million citizens using Facebook For more interesting stats, take a look at TechCrunch alum Nick Gonzalez’s site CheckFacebook, which maps out some of the site’s most up-to-date demographic data. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Nine Startups Present To The DC Tech Community At TECH Cocktail Posted: 27 Aug 2009 07:50 PM PDT
Though situated in the heart of Government 2.0, the private sector in Washington, D.C. has been a wellspring of new startups each quarter. TECH cocktail, a community building organization, looks to help entrepreneurs by giving them a place to share their latest creations with the local technology community. The first couple of TECH cocktail events in Chicago were covered here in July and October 2006. Since then, TECH cocktails have been guzzled down like dirty martinis quarterly in D.C. and Chicago and annually in Boulder, Boston and other smaller technology communities. TECH cocktail D.C. 6 is being held tonight and is supported by local companies like AOL, which will be showing off the new AIM product with its real-time lifestream. AOL is joined by Boalt, TransFS, Jess3, iStrategyLabs and a handful of other local supporters who help make it possible for TECH cocktail to promote the startup scene. The start-ups demoing will include the following:
If you cannot make the D.C. event, look for TECH cocktail Boston 3 on September 3rd or work with us to bring TECH cocktail to your local tech community. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| OneRiot Fights Its Way To A New $7 Million Round Posted: 27 Aug 2009 06:35 PM PDT
While the real-time search space is particularly hot at the moment, OneRiot has been focusing on opening up and expanding its APIs to allow others to tap into its data. Partners include Yahoo and Microsoft, who of course, will also soon be much closer in the search space. Meanwhile, search titan Google is said to be very interested in the real-time space and is exploring its own way of doing things. And then of course there is Twitter which currently offers search based on its Summize acquisition, but is also said to have something bigger in the works. Much of the Twitter Search expansion talk revolves around looking at the link data (something which Twitter was apparently doing the other day before it pulled the test down). That also happens to be what OneRiot specializes in, scouring the real-time space, crawling for links, rather than simply status updates. But they’re also clearly aware of the power of Twitter in the real-time space, as they recently launched a RiotFeeds product that breaks down links from Twitter into different categories. The company last raised a large $15 million round in the summer of 2007, before it was even known as OneRiot. Back then, it was known as Me.dium, and was more of a StumbleUpon-type product. This new round brings the company’s total funding to $27 million over three rounds. This new money will be used to improve three key area of the service: Speed, scale and relevance, we’re told. OneRiot’s CEO is Kimbal Musk, Elon Musk’s younger brother. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| MOG Raises Another $5 Million As Traffic Nearly Doubles Since January Posted: 27 Aug 2009 05:30 PM PDT
MOG has been having a stellar year. In April the site launched a completely overhauled homepage, which now includes music news, reviews, a selection of top posts from its blogs, and a variety of other content. The MOG network now sees over 8 million unique visitors a month, with over 700 blogs that generate over 6,000 posts a week. MOG’s existing products are obviously doing quite well, but I can’t help but wonder if the new round was in part helped by its unlaunched music streaming product, which we previewed back in January. At the time we called it Ultimate Streaming Music App that may never launch, because it only had two of the four major labels signed on. If MOG managed to get the remaining holdouts on board, the company would be a ripe target for investors. The company declined to comment on the matter, but we’ll be keeping an eye out for more on this.  Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Microsoft Ends Bing Promotion Early After Hitting Cashback Limit Posted: 27 Aug 2009 04:59 PM PDT
Microsoft had set a cap on the amount of money saved or an end date of August 30, whichever came first. Obviously, the money limit did. But for some retailers that were doing particularly well, the promotion ended even earlier. One retailer that reached out to us, The Watchery, was offering 50% off of watches under $5,000. On Monday the 24th — just a week after their promotion started — Microsoft reached out to them to see if they could lower the 50% off deal to 20%, we’re told. Basically, they asked some of the retailers offering huge deals to scale them back a bit so the other Cashback partners could take advantage of the promotion before Microsoft hit the cap. But The Watchery couldn’t be happier with the sales they got while the promotion was in place. “On Sunday and Monday (23rd and 24th), the site did over a million dollars in sales each day. The site had over 250,000 visitors during the sale period,” a spokesperson for the company tells us. “Best sales in our history,” they continued. Over a million dollars in sales each day, with Microsoft footing much of the bill, that’s a nice deal. Now, whether this actually led to a significant amount of new users using Bing remains to be seen, but the numbers are trending upward. [photo: flickr/stopnlook] Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Now That AdMob Bought AdWhirl, Will Anybody Trust It? Posted: 27 Aug 2009 04:21 PM PDT In the budding world of mobile advertising, whoever can control the app developers and gain access to the ad inventory on their apps will eventually win the game. Keep that in mind as you try to understand the very strange acquisition of AdWhirl by AdMob. You see, AdMob is perhaps the largest independent mobile ad network and AdWhirl is a fast growing mobile ad exchange which allows mobile app developers to switch from AdMob to other competing mobile ad networks such as Quattro, VideoEgg, or Mobclix. Although it launched only last April, AdWhirl was quickly becoming the preferred advertising interface for many developers because they could still serve AdMob ads through it, but not be tied to AdMob if a better deal came along. AdMob didn’t really like this so it threatened to stop supporting AdWhirl’s “mediation layer” and basically pull out of it altogether. That plan didn’t go over too well with the app developers AdMob needs to keep happy, so it quickly reversed itself and decided to delay its decision to withdraw from AdWhirl. Since it couldn’t take its toys and go home, it did the next best thing. It bought AdWhirl. Problem solved. Except that now, who is going to trust AdMob to maintain AdWhirl as a neutral exchange rather than use it to funnel more of its own ads to developers? Or worse, to track all of the ad impression data of its competitors to improve its own ad products? Our source who told us about the acquisition claims that AdWhirl has already been giving AdMob this data on the sly in the hopes that it would be acquired. He also claims that ” there is a lot of stuff under the covers to favor AdMob: in the code, in the data, and biased ad calls to AdMob.” The source, who thinks developers will get the short end of the stick in this deal, also seems to think that AdMob will eventually just shut AdWhirl down, blaming the other ad networks for a lack of cooperation or technical integration issues. We’ll see how that plays out. But for now, AdWhirl still generates too many impressions for the other ad networks to simply abandon it. But that is exactly what they should do if they want to counter the combined power of Admob and AdWhirl. “I don't understand how it remains unbiased or why other networks would want to be a part of that,” says Mobclix co-founder Sunil Verma, who has built a competing mobile ad exchange. AdMob is trying to calm fears of bias by promising to open-source the underlying code which powers AdWhirl. But again, it is not so much the code, as how it is used that is the issue. “No matter what, AdMob will still have access to the data and it will become biased as to who gets the first ad call,” worries Mobclix’s other co-founder Krishna Subramanian. If other mobile ad networks and developers share those concerns, AdMob will have a bigger problem than it did with AdWhirl. It will lose the trust of the developers it needs to survive. Update: AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui has given us the following response regarding the acquisition:
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Worth The Wait: New Facebook iPhone App Sneaks In Some Last Minute Changes Posted: 27 Aug 2009 03:50 PM PDT
Hewitt hinted at some changes in a tweet today, and after talking to him, we got the details. “Apple asked me to fix a really minor issue last night, so I sent them a binary with features I’d done in the last two weeks,” Hewitt tells us. So what’s new? The two big features are landscape mode and home screen organizing, we’re told. Sure enough, neither of those are available in the (test) version I currently have. Hewitt also notes that the app looks slightly different as he decided to remove the grid lines on the home screen while making the last minute changes. (See the top screenshot.) So there you go, thanks partially to the long wait, you got some new features that weren’t meant to come until the next iteration. It’s nice that Apple let Hewitt know about the small issue rather than rejecting the app and making him fix and resubmit. Of course, they probably read his rant against the App Store approval process and knew that would have been a very bad move. You can find the new Facebook app here. Update: As some commenters are noting, there is a bug right now that allows status updates to be seen by friends of your regardless of privacy filters. Hewitt says the Platform team is looking into it, and that it’s a backend issue that should be resolved quickly. A new version of the app will not be necessary. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Facebook 3.0 For iPhone Now Available On The App Store Posted: 27 Aug 2009 02:11 PM PDT
The new application brings a slew of new features, making it what may be the most useful app on the App Store (be sure to read this post) for our full review. Among the additions are Events, which have frustratingly been omitted from previous versions. Now you’ll be able to look up where your Events are, and you can also respond to them and see which of your friends are attending (for anyone who has ever had to boot up the web version of the site just to look up an Event address, this is a big deal). You can also post video directly to the site if you have an iPhone 3GS — a feature that will likely see the number of videos on Facebook increase dramatically. Smaller changes include a News Feed that more closely reflects the feed you’ll find on the main Facebook site, as well as the ability to “Like” items your friends have created. One feature that users will be missing is Push Notifications, which we suspect will be rolled out in version 3.1, which Hewitt is already working on. There will also be support for landscape mode in the upcoming release, and we may also see support for the ability to watch Facebook videos from the phone (right now you can only upload them). It’s worth noting that the 11 day wait since Facebook originally submitted the application was enough to raise Hewitt’s ire (and justifiably so), leading him to condemn the App Store approval process and call for its removal entirely. I couldn’t agree with him more. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Posted: 27 Aug 2009 01:47 PM PDT We’ve heard from numerous sources that mobile ad network AdMob may be in the process of acquiring AdWhirl, the startup that lets iPhone developers tap into multiple ad networks. One source has even said that AdWhirl is already working out of AdMob’s offices, though we haven’t confirmed this. Update: this is confirmed Asked on the phone whether AdWhirl has been acquired by AdMob, AdWhirl CEO Sam Yam responded, “How did you know that,” before clamming up with a “no comment.” It’s an interesting partnership, and one that raises a few questions. AdWhirl allows developers to switch between different ad networks on the fly without having to submit a new application coded with another ad network to Apple. The service has support for five different ad networks, including AdMob, Quattro Wireless, Videoegg, Jumptap, Mobclix and Millenial Media. Mobclix has a competing iPhone exchange that AdMob is not a part of. But if AdMob and AdWhirl have a relationship, this might make the waters a bit murky for the other networks. It would be suspect to have an open platform that is owned by one of the ad networks. The acquisition does come as a surprise, however. In June, AdMob announced its decision to cut off ad network aggregators like AdWhirl and Tapjoy, claiming it had been hearing of complaints of technical glitches related to ads served by such "ad net mediators.” The company later announced a delay in this decision in August. UPDATE: AdMob acquired the assets of AdWhirl, according a press release issues this afternoon. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| 25 Years Later, First Registered Domain Name Changes Hands Posted: 27 Aug 2009 11:09 AM PDT
While the first that was created in January of that same year was Nordu.net (used to serve as the identifier of the first root server, nic.nordu.net), symbolics.com was the first domain name to actually be registered through the appropriate DNS process a few months later. This was of course long before there was a WWW, but you already had ‘the Internet’. In fact, the first TCP/IP-based wide-area network had already been operational for two years when nordu.net was created, right around the time the United States’ National Science Foundation (NSF) commissioned the construction of the legendary NSFNET, a university 56 kilobit/second network backbone. Only six companies thought it’d be a good idea to reserve the domain name on the root servers in 1985 (the others were bbn.com, think.com, mcc.com, dec.com and northrop.com). But Symbolics was first to make the move. Remarkably, Symbolics.com hasn’t changed ownership once during the nearly 25 years that followed its initial registration. Marking an end to that era, domain name investment company XF.com Investments has just purchased the domain name for an undisclosed sum. Which calls for a bit of history about the original owner: Symbolics, Inc - a spinoff from the MIT AI Lab - was a computer manufacturer headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts and later in Concord, Massachusetts, that designed and manufactured a line of Lisp machines, single-user computers optimized to run the Lisp programming language. The machines became the first commercially available “general-purpose computers” or “workstations” way before those terms were coined. The company also offered one of the premier software development environments of the 1980s and 1990s, now sold commercially as Open Genera for Tru64 UNIX on the HP Alpha. In the late eighties, the company started its slow descent towards bankruptcy and oblivion, neatly chronicled in this blog post by former Symbolics employee Dan Weinreb:
Symbolics still exists as a shell of its former self. But now the very first .com domain name ever registered becomes property of a small domain name investment holding that is so shy about its identity that it doesn’t publish the names of the people involved with the company, let alone a company address, on its website. There’s absolutely no indication of what the future has in store for the historical domain name, apart from the fact XF.com intends to celebrate its 25th birthday next year. To quote Samwise Gamgee in Lord Of The Rings: “I don’t know why, but it makes me sad.” Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| iBing? Microsoft Wants You To Build An iPhone App For That Posted: 27 Aug 2009 11:02 AM PDT
The Bing iPhone and Mac SDK is available for anyone to download here, and it’s even open source (under the Microsoft Public License). Here’s what it includes:
Microsoft also writes that, “The SDK was designed to remove the headache of manually having to parse XML or JSON in order to communicate with the Bing API.“ Humorously, the domain that houses the SDK begins with “ibing”, undoubtedly a play on Apple’s branding. A lot of companies of course use similar branding for their applications, but Microsoft and Apple are fierce rivals. But it’s great to see Microsoft creating an open source SDK to give developers more options for the iPhone and Mac apps. Bing has been making a lot of smart moves since its launch earlier this year. Now, hopefully Apple doesn’t pull any funny business in the app approval process for apps that use Bing (though I don’t see why they would, plenty of apps use Bing Maps, for example). Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| isocket Raises $2 Million Series A With Some Big Names Posted: 27 Aug 2009 11:00 AM PDT
Additional investors include David Cohen of TechStars in Colorado, Quest Venture Partners, Accelerator Ventures, and Plug & Play / Amidzad. isocket is an early stage startup in limited, invitation-only beta testing. It went live in May 2009 via a launch program with TechCrunch. The company has been pretty quiet about product details or plans outside of what's available in their private beta. isocket does not charge a commission on in-network transactions, instead favoring flat monthly fees that are saving publishers an average of thousands of dollars per month over their competitors. John Ramey, Founder and CEO, says they are bringing the "principles of the open web to the historically closed ad market" via their platform and business model. isocket plans on using this funding to expand their team and bring their platform to the public. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Translate Google Docs And Share Them Around The World Posted: 27 Aug 2009 09:42 AM PDT  Google docs is a useful application for sharing documents, but previously didn’t allow for sharing across different languages. Today, Google is launching a feature in Google Docs that will automatically translate documents into 42 different languages. In the tools menu of Google Docs, you can now click “Translate document” and choose the language to translate too. This functionality uses Google Translate’s technology. You can replace the original document with the translation or save the new translated version as a different document. Google says that formatting and layout of translated documents remains the same regardless of what what language it’s in. It looks like along with new features, Google Docs may be getting a new interface soon, perhaps in the fight to one-up Microsoft Office’s new web-based productivity suite. Google also peeled off the beta label for Docs in July. It seems that this is just another example of Google’s tying its apps together. Other examples of this trend are bringing Google Gadgets into Gmail, Docs and Calendar, Picasa pictures in Google Maps and more. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Facebook Bows to Canadian Privacy Concerns, Will Change The Way All Apps Access Social Data Posted: 27 Aug 2009 09:36 AM PDT Bowing to privacy concerns by Canada, Facebook is going to change the way all apps work on Facebook, particularly how they access user data. Facebook will be further fine-tuning its privacy controls. The biggest change will be how third party applications access a user’s personal data and that of his or her network of friends. Currently, when you install a Facebook app, you get a pop-up box which asks you to allow the third-party app to access personal information. Once you give permission, the app can work. Now, the apps will have to ask repeatedly for permission as they request new types of information, and users will have to “specifically approve any access to their friends' information.” What this amounts to is basically more privacy notifications explaining exactly what type of data is being shared and giving users more control over what they want to share. Facebook explains on its developer blog:
On a conference call today, Facebook senior platform manager Dave Morin noted, “We certainly think that good privacy is good business.” But there is also a tension between privacy controls and the smooth functioning of social apps which require access to the semi-private social data on Facebook in order to work properly. Asked if these new polices would make it more likely for apps to break, Morin tried to downplay that possibility: “This change will not likely cause many applications to break per se, but cause users to more clearly understand what information they are sharing with the application.” Of course, if users decide to shut down access to key parts of their social data, many apps won’t work. But that, of course, is up to each user. On the call, Facebook was also keen to point out how much privacy controls users already have when it comes to third party apps. Currently, users can block any app or authorize access to data at a very granular level. Although they didn’t say this in the call, I’d expect many of these controls to become more explicit. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Nokia N900 and Maemo 5 Get Official, Launching In October Posted: 27 Aug 2009 09:34 AM PDT  Waaaay back in May, we put up just shy of 750 words jam-packed with details on Nokia's unannounced N900 Internet Tablet. This morning, Nokia finally pulled back the curtains on the device - and man, we absolutely nailed it. Though we would have expected Nokia to announce this at next week's Nokia World event, they've gone and verified all of the details we'd mentioned previously. 3.5" 800x480 touchscreen? Check. 32GB internal storage? Check. 5 megapixel camera, T-Mobile USA friendly 1700mhz bands, and running Maemo 5? Three checks, please.TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
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