The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Fwix Launches API For Real-Time Local News, Announces $2.75 Million Series A Round
- Is ToyBots Dreaming Big Enough?
- Source: Insight Venture Partners Is The New Twitter Investor
- Socializr Lays Off Staff, On DeadPool Watch
- Review: HTC Hero From Sprint
- TC50: Six Noteworthy Startups From Korea And Japan
- IDrive Lite, A Contacts Backup App For iPhone And BlackBerry, Gets Even Better
- Google Eyeing 10% Market Share For Chrome. Mac Version Due By The End Of The Year.
- Kanye West Disrespects Our Website
- Twitter’s Next Headache: API Name Squatting
- Twitter Closing New Venture Round At $1 Billion Valuation
- Tiny Speck Gets Digg’s Designer. Digg Gets The Guy Who Designed Threadless
- PayPal Partners With FundRazr And Lottay To Test New Adaptive Payments API
- MySpace Music Rolls Out A Sleek, More Interactive Homepage
- Google Acquires reCaptcha To Power Scanning For Google Books And Google News
| Fwix Launches API For Real-Time Local News, Announces $2.75 Million Series A Round Posted: 17 Sep 2009 04:59 AM PDT
The basic idea behind Fwix is fairly simple: it aggregates news articles and blog posts that are relevant to a certain region (the site now features support for over 80 cities in the United States and Canada). To do this, the Fwix team selects news sources and blogs that it thinks are related to each city, and also uses automated algorithms to determine when other content might also be relevant. Fwix has evolved considerably since its launch last August. For one, it has seen a total redesign, shrugging the Facebook-like interface it launched with in favor of something more streamlined. The site has also been making some recent strides in getting distribution — itlaunched a widget that allows bloggers to embed Fwix’s local news feeds into their sites, and the widget network is now seeing over 9 million monthly unique visitors. Shirazi says that the new API has been in private beta on a handful of sites, including Weather Underground and RawStory. He also notes that the company’s iPhone app (which also has changed significantly since we covered it in March) was built using the API. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco           |
| Is ToyBots Dreaming Big Enough? Posted: 17 Sep 2009 01:58 AM PDT
I think ToyBots is the future, where all toys (and just about everything else) is Internet-connected. But I don’t think the company is dreaming big enough. There are obvious similarities between ToyBots and Teddy Ruxpin, an 80’s superhit toy that moved and lip synched stories via a cassette tape player hidden in the back. 1.4 million of the toys were sold in the first year it was on the market in 1986, and it was the number one selling toy in 1985 and 1986. Worlds of Wonder Inc., the company that launched the toy, had sales of $93 million in its first fiscal year. Now imagine Teddy Ruxpin with an Internet connection. Upload stories (even ones that you read yourself) over Wifi. Then the toy talks them back to you. There’s a website that acts as a remote control and mirrors your movements, possibly even via a webcam that detects and understands your movements. Make and share a choreographed set of movements. Add in the huge virtual and physical merchandising opportunities as the toy gets stuff in the real and virtual worlds. ToyBots done right is a multi-billion dollar revenue opportunity. And CEO Shervin Pishevar knows it. But there’s just one problem. “We don't want to build the toys ourselves. We want to be the gaming cloud,” he told the judges at TechCrunch50. …And that’s not an unreasonable business plan. There’s real technology behind ToyBots, and some of the huge toy companies may license it instead of trying to just duplicate it in house. ToyBots can make some money off those fees and revenue sharing. But what if those big toy companies don’t license ToyBots and instead go a parallel path to develop their own technology? Or another possibility – they do license the ToyBots platform, but the toys are a dud? And even if they do create a winner, they’ll keep the lion’s share of the revenue and profits. In my humble opinion (which was shared by one of the TechCrunch50 judges I spoke with backstage), ToyBots shouldn’t be hitting for a single or a double, they should be swinging for the fences and launching their own superhit toy. If they fail they fail. Perhaps they could still pursue their technology licensing. But if they do it right, they’d win big. And I like companies that want to win it all. Even if they fail, they know they at least gave it a shot. In addition to developing the platform, ToyBots should be hard at work on the first toy, for a release by the 2010 holiday season. Something significantly more cuddly and less please-don’t-kill-me-while-I-sleep than the functioning prototype they showed off at TechCrunch50. It talks. It walks. It has a virtual world and website remote-control. It’s always connected and downloading commands and content. It’s the must have toy of 2010. And it’s the first TechCrunch50 company to go public. And once that hit is in place, everyone else will beg them to license the platform, too. The next step is to hire the best toy designer in the world. Someone hungry, with a vision. Probably hard to work with. An artiste. Marry that person to this hard core tech platform and you’ve got something quite interesting. And if it fails, you don’t have to hang your head. At least you swung the bat, instead of watching others do it. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Source: Insight Venture Partners Is The New Twitter Investor Posted: 16 Sep 2009 11:03 PM PDT
The primary investor in the deal, we’ve heard from a source with knowledge of the transaction, is New York-based Insight Venture Partners, which has raised over $3 billion since being founded in 1995. They were (or rather their founders were) early investors in Photobucket, which was acquired by News Corp./MySpace in 2007 for around $250 million. What’s not clear is if Twitter is capping the round at $50 million. One source says they may raise more. With that valuation, who’d blame them? Not me. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Socializr Lays Off Staff, On DeadPool Watch Posted: 16 Sep 2009 09:45 PM PDT
We’ve heard from a couple of sources that Socializr has laid off most or all of the staff and that the site is running on autopilot. The company confirms cost reductions but won’t go into more detail on the scope of the layoffs. From founder Jonathan Abrams:
Abrams is best known for founding Friendster in 2002, one of the first popular social networks. Friendster ultimately lost its pole position in social networking to MySpace, which in turn lost to Facebook. But Friendster created a template for a user profile and friending that is still used by competitors. Socializr was dubbed “evite 2.0″ when it first launched by various press, but it turns out that it’s probably competitive pressure from Facebook and others that have doomed the service. Evite hasn’t evolved much, but more social invitation products, such as those offered by Facebook, have stolen a lot of new user growth. Socailizr, which never had a huge user base, can’t compete with what is essentially a side feature at the mammoth Facebook. Compete shows Socializr peaking at 90,000 or so monthly U.S. visitors earlier this summer, which is certainly not enough to sustain a venture backed business. The company raised a total of $2.25 million over two rounds, the latest in 2007. It doesn’t look like Socializr is shutting down any time soon, but it’s definitely on DeadPool watch. Let’s hope it can find a way to pull out a win, even a small one. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Posted: 16 Sep 2009 09:30 PM PDT  It was written that a great Hero would rise from the East. He would be clothed in the sun and his unique user-interface would redefine the user experience for countless fans of social networking and his majesty would reign over all over Android phones forever. That Hero is here, and he's on Sprint. I love the Hero, even in the form that the phone took in Sprint's able hands. While the comparisons to another Sprint phone will be rampant, I'm here to tell you that this isn't the Palm Pre and that this phone is my favorite phone, other than the phone that starts with "i" and rhymes with iPhone. The Hero, in this incarnation, is a perfect mix of form and function. First, for an earlier look at the Hero drop over here for my original review.TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| TC50: Six Noteworthy Startups From Korea And Japan Posted: 16 Sep 2009 08:29 PM PDT
TechCrunch50 has always been very welcoming towards companies from countries other than the US. Last year, for example, a total of five companies from Japan made a showing at the event (three startups presented onstage, two were in the DemoPit). This year, Korea sent four promising companies to TechCrunch50 (finalist Sealtale, and DemoPit participants UniQube, touchring and FillThat), while Japan had two startups exhibiting in the DemoPit (LIFEmee and Spysee). These are the four noteworthy Korean services that made it to TechCrunch50 this year:
Sealtale allows you to design and distribute your own seals, too. Companies can create branded seals and use them as viral marketing vehicles. A movie studio, for example, could create a seal for one of its movies and provide trailers and text-based information for users who choose to show that seal on their blog. Read more about Sealtale in our previous post.
When an actor eats a pizza in a certain scene of a movie, for example, an overlay pizza ad could be displayed. Viewers choosing to click on it could then sign up for a competition or get discount coupons directly within the video without navigating away to another page. Snippets containing the interactive ads can be cut out and sent to friends via Twitter, Facebook and other media. UniQube users can track the distribution paths and effectiveness of their video ads in real-time. The solution is built upon Silverlight and still in development. These are the two services from Japan that were in the TechCrunch 50 DemoPit:
LIFEmee launched at TechCrunch50 (a Japanese version follows soon). Read more about this service in my previous post.
Photo credit: Fumi Yamazaki Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| IDrive Lite, A Contacts Backup App For iPhone And BlackBerry, Gets Even Better Posted: 16 Sep 2009 06:10 PM PDT
It backs up my contacts to the cloud so I don’t have to worry about losing that vital information were I to lose the device or accidentally drop it into a river (don’t ask), it works like a charm and it’s absolutely free. And today the company behind the app, Pro Softnet Corporation, made the tool even more useful. IDrive Lite for iPhone and Blackberry (links go to respective app stores) got upgraded with a number of reliability and performance fixes, and now allows you to restore contacts that you saved to a different device. That means you can now backup your contacts from your BlackBerry and switch to the iPhone – or vice versa – and still be able to restore all the contact details you saved using the tool. The same goes for when you’re sticking with the same brand but switching from an earlier version to a newer model. If you’d like to view and manage your contacts database online, you can head to idrivelite.com and log in with your IDrive account. The dashboard allows you to add, edit or delete contact information, import contacts from Facebook and view logs of the activities performed from the app and/or the website. I’ll repeat it again: the mobile application is totally free. For an alternative solution, check out My.Memova. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Google Eyeing 10% Market Share For Chrome. Mac Version Due By The End Of The Year. Posted: 16 Sep 2009 03:29 PM PDT
The first is that while Chrome currently has just under 3 percent of the browser market currently, a year from now, they’re planning to have at least 5 percent. More importantly, 2 years from now, if Chrome doesn’t have at least 10 percent share, Google will be “exceptionally disappointed,” Chrome Engineering Director Linus Upson told Reuters. And Google’s own internal projections for the browser are even higher, apparently. While I think I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t like Chrome — a lot — this past year has proven that it may be hard for Google to hit such numbers. While plenty of people in the tech scene have posted their internal numbers (like Google’s own Matt Cutts) showing some pretty impressive Chrome share numbers from visitors coming to their sites, the general public is clearly not as quick to switch as the early-adopters in the tech scene. Just having a great browser may not be enough, Google will likely have to step up its advertising campaigns (mostly on the web) to get real gains. But Google also has a big wildcard it has yet to play: Mac support. And in the same Reuters article, Google confirmed that it Chrome for Mac will be available before the end of this year. So yes, sometime in the next 3 months, Google’s 3 percent share should see a fairly big bump from Mac users who will at least try it out. Right now, the majority of Mac users browse with Firefox or Apple’s own Safari. But Firefox is typically pretty slow, and Safari, while fast, has some quirks and doesn’t allow for the easy use of plug-ins. Chrome promises to bring a combination of both speed and plug-ins to the Mac. I’ve been using the developer builds of Chromium (the open source project behind Chrome) for months now, and it’s definitely getting really, really close to being ready for prime time. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Kanye West Disrespects Our Website Posted: 16 Sep 2009 02:49 PM PDT This is pretty awesome. You’ve probably heard about hip hop artist Kanye West’s antics on Sunday night during MTV’s VMA awards. If not, watch this. Basically, West interrupted country singer Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech to say that Beyonce deserved the award. It seems like no one will shut up about it. While West later apologized, his name has been a top trending topic on Twitter ever since the incident. And now any website can suffer the same disrespect at the hands of West. Kanyelicio.us is a site with one purpose: To make Kanye West insult your own site. Simply type in the URL “http://kanyelicio.us/” and after the final “/” put in your own domain. For example, here’s Kanye insulting TechCrunch. Hours of endless fun. You may recall that back in May, West wrote a long, capitalized, rant against Twitter. He was mad about people pretending to be him on the service. I’m not sure if he ever got his own name, but that account is now suspended. Poor Kanye.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Twitter’s Next Headache: API Name Squatting Posted: 16 Sep 2009 01:55 PM PDT
When Tweets are published there is an additional layer of information below the main message that says when the message was posted, and how it was posted. Here’s an example message Michael Arrington just posted from the Seesmic Twitter web app. If you click on “Seesmic” in that Tweet it takes you to Seesmic.com. But there’s a problem. Twitter’s API allows developers to register any application name, and Twitter messages posted from that third party application will show that name and will link to anything the developer wants. Only names that contain “twitter” or “tweet” are filtered out. Everything else is fair game. Robert Robb from TweetBorder emailed us about this, and show this test Twitter message that was posted from “Windows.” He also registered the Microsoft name but deleted it to avoid any legal trouble. We’ve checked, and the TechCrunch name has already been taken by someone. This isn’t a big issue yet, but we expect to become one shortly. And if you want to avoid the hassle of trying to get your name back from the Twitter API, we recommend you take steps to register your name and application now. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Twitter Closing New Venture Round At $1 Billion Valuation Posted: 16 Sep 2009 01:02 PM PDT
The company will raise around $50 million, we’ve heard, although the final amount of the raise is apparently not yet locked down. Twitter raised $35+ million earlier this year in a round led by Benchmark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners. That round valued the company at $250 million. The company has raised a total of around $55 million to date, and sources tell us they have approximately $30 million left in the bank. Update: A source tells us that New York based Insight Venture Partners is the primary investor in this round. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Tiny Speck Gets Digg’s Designer. Digg Gets The Guy Who Designed Threadless Posted: 16 Sep 2009 11:46 AM PDT
Next month, Burka (pictured) will begin work at Tiny Speck, the new project started by a group of former high level Flickr employees, including Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield and former Flickr head of engineering, Cal Henderson. Still not much is known about Tiny Speck, but it’s expected to be some sort of social gaming project. And Burka’s hiring makes sense; as we reported in July, the company was looking to hire creative and design talent, which clearly Burka is. While the project is based in Vancouver (also where Flickr was started), Burka will be staying in San Francisco, along with several other Tiny Speck team members, including Henderson, Burka notes in a tweet. Meanwhile, Digg should be in good hands with Kalmikoff. One month ago, he resigned as the Chief Creative Officer of skinnyCorp/Threadless where he had worked for 7 years. He had been planning on taking an extended period of time off, but felt he couldn’t pass up the Digg opportunity, he writes today on his blog. Kalmikoff didn’t disclose any plans for Digg yet, but it will be interesting to see if the site undergoes a substantial redesign under him. While Digg has undergone several facelifts throughtout the years, the overall design of the Digg button followed by the story headline has remained in tact. Burka is the one who designed the Digg button you now see everywhere on the web. Threadless has a great design too, but it’s definitely different from Digg. Burka was a recipient of a 2009 TechFellow Award for Product Design and Marketing. [photo: flickr/laughing squid] Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| PayPal Partners With FundRazr And Lottay To Test New Adaptive Payments API Posted: 16 Sep 2009 11:42 AM PDT Recently, PayPal announced its flexible payments API, called Adaptive Payments (which we scooped) gives developers full access to PayPal's features, allowing them a lot more freedom in building applications, which includes the ability to accept and distribute payments. PayPal is timing the official availability of these APIs with its PayPal X Innovate 2009 conference in November. According to PayPal, developer attendees will receive exclusive access to the new APIs that won’t be available to non-attendees until 2010. And PayPal will be unveiling its platform roadmap for the future, which should be interesting. We already got a little sneak preview of the PayPal’s future vision a few weeks ago. Of course, it’s always helpful to see what developers can actually do with this new API to see it’s true power and connectivity. PayPal has been beta testing the new flexible payments platform with select developers over the past few months and it just so happens that two of testers are TechCrunch50 demopit companies. Lottay, another TechCrunch50 demopit company that is building its platform off of PayPal’s new API, lets you create an online gift that people can put money towards. Users can create gift pages on Lottay with detailed descriptions and pictures of a particular goal or gift and then friends can contribute to the site via PayPal. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| MySpace Music Rolls Out A Sleek, More Interactive Homepage Posted: 16 Sep 2009 10:57 AM PDT  MySpace may not be the leader in the social networking space anymore, but its free music streaming site, MySpace Music, has been growing fast. Which is why it’s not surprising that the social network is continuing to improve on this popular product. Today, it appears that MySpace Music has launched a new version of its homepage with UI redesign and several new features (we’ve confirmed with the company that that the redesign is new). The new homepage is more visually appealing, with images of artists and bands front and center on the page and a sleek. modern interface. The site also features a “What’s Hot” section above the fold, which are the highest streamed arists’ and videos on the platform. Users can also create and share playlists on the homepage that are mixed in with artists’ playlists. Another interactive section of the site is the karaoke section which lets MySpace Music users upload and share karaoke videos of their favorite artists. And MySpace is aggregating breaking music news, concert listings and new artists mentions into the homepage design. All in all, the redesign is an improvement from the original homepage, which needed a bit of a makeover. Plus, MySpace has added a number of features that make the site more engaging to users. MySpace Music launched last fall, and has grown its traffic by 190%, according to Nielsen. New MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta expressed concern recently of whether users know that MySpace Music is a destination for music or not, and perhaps this redesign is a way to make the site standout more as a music destination. Earlier this year, MySpace unveiled a new executive team for MySpace Music (which is a joint-venture with some major music labels and thus an independent entity) and improved several of its features on the site. MySpace also recently acquired iLike, a social network based around music. In the announcement, Van Natta said there were no plans to introduce music streaming from MySpace Music into iLike, but te two businesses would work together to grow the event ticketing business. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Google Acquires reCaptcha To Power Scanning For Google Books And Google News Posted: 16 Sep 2009 09:52 AM PDT Google has acquired reCAPTCHA, an open source technology that provides CAPTCHAs to prevent spam and fraud. Captchas are those security questions you find on Web sites that require you to decipher and type words or numbers and detects whether the user is a human. Here’s what Google wrote in a blog post about the announcement:
Google says that reCAPTCHA's technology improves the process that converts scanned images into plain text, known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR). It sounds like Google will be using the technology to power massive scanning projects for Google Books and Google News Archive Search as well as for fraud and spam prevention. In May, the New York Times reported that Google was developing their own type of captcha and also took notice of the potential of reCAPTCHA’s technology. Sounds like Google found it more effective to acquire reCAPTCHA’s technology instead of reinventing the wheel. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
One of my favorite startups at TechCrunch50 earlier this week was 
We’ve been talking to sources all day about that new 
As we 
Twitter continues to work through username squatting issues by reassigning trademarked and even non-trademarked user names to their more appropriate owners. It’s a manual process that sometimes takes weeks, but with Twitter’s growing importance more and more brands are trying to lock up their usernames. Now, though, Twitter has a new headache, and poor organization and planning around Twitter’s third party developer platform is to blame.
For the past four and a half years, anyone who has visited 
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