The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- TC50 DemoPit Startup AskYourTargetMarket Simplifies Market Research
- How Should RIM React to Increased Competition From Apple, Palm?
- Pandora: From Near-Death to Profitability in a Year
- Google Hits Back At AT&T Over New Google Voice FCC Complaint
- Measy Helps You Pick Gadgets With A Quiz (Private Beta Invites)
- Squidoo Backs Down On ‘Brand Campaign’ As Many Are ‘Not so Happy’ About It
- Chinese iPhone Pricing Revealed: It’s The Exact Opposite Of Ours
- AT&T Goes After Google Voice, Net Neutrality And Double Standards (Full Letter To FCC)
- TransFS Launches Comparison Shopping Site For Credit Card Processing Fees
- Spotted: Ultimate Apple Fanboy Visits The Mothership
- Let’s Kill The CPM
- Anchors Away! Google Now Has Search Results Within Search Results
- Browser Plugin Shareaholic Passes 1 Million Downloads, Closes Seed Funding
- Hey, Disco Party People, How About Some Windows 7 Commercials?
- Twitter Closes Its $100 Million Round
- Today is MMS On iPhone Day. Did Yours Kick In Yet?
- Songkick Integrates Twitter To Make Gig Reviews Realtime
- Localyte Launches iPhone App To Be Your Personal Sherpa
| TC50 DemoPit Startup AskYourTargetMarket Simplifies Market Research Posted: 25 Sep 2009 07:30 PM PDT TC50 DemoPit company AskYourTargetMarket is hoping to simplify market research for businesses and solutions by offering a comprehensive platform where businesses can both create and deploy surveys. Since the site is in closed beta, AskYourTargetMarket has offered 500 invites for TechCrunch readers. Each invite comes with a free survey package for up to 50 respondents; enter the beta code “TC50-2009″ here. The site lets you define your target market demographic, then write a survey to distribute to focus groups. Because you are able to target a particular group, you don’t have to waste space on your survey with demographic questions. Once your survey is finalized, AskYourTargetMarket will launch it to your desired demographic within their consumer panel for as little as $29.95 for 50 respondents. The site, which says it has thousands of U.S. consumers on their survey panel, draws its respondents from its sister site, InstantCashSweepstakes.com, which offers users a cash prize incentive for filling out surveys. AskYourTargetMarket is also developing its own “worker site” where members will get paid per question and will be ranked by a detailed algorithm which will determine their pay scale per question. Once your survey has been deployed, results can be delivered in a few minutes up to 72 hours. Upon receiving the results, the site will offer you tools to create a easily shareable report with analysis and distribution of the results, through charts and graphs. While the company hasn’t tweaked its pricing yet, its founders tell us that they hope to provide survey options with up to 400 respondents under $100. This price point is definitely appealing considering how expensive it can be to conduct market research. SurveyMonkey (which is growing fast) and Survs.com offer in-depth survey options but don’t offer AskYourTargetMarket’s consumer panel.  Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco           |
| How Should RIM React to Increased Competition From Apple, Palm? Posted: 25 Sep 2009 04:50 PM PDT  Poor RIM. One or two analysts lower your stock rating from "buy" to "neutral" (or the equivalent), and then your stock drops some 16 percent. You know who to blame, too: it's those busybodies at Apple and Palm, what with their iPhones and Palm Pres eating into your bottom line. (Never mind that your own "iPhone killer" was sorta meh.) What is RIM to do?TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Pandora: From Near-Death to Profitability in a Year Posted: 25 Sep 2009 04:03 PM PDT
And that's worked to Pandora's advantage. Westergren did such a good job of warning the site's rabid fans that the RIAA may be running it out of business that those fans actually broke fax machines on Capitol Hill with complaints. Westergren gets what a lot of entrepreneurs don't: It's about survival, not ego. That's especially true when you're an online music company. Of course, today Pandora is sitting pretty thanks to a hard work and a serendipitous one-two-three punch. Punch one: The iPhone app, which changed the nature of Internet radio by making it mobile. Punch two: A nice $35 million round of funding from top investors. Punch three: Finally a reasonable settlement from the RIAA. Pandora has 35 million registered users (double what it had last year), it's bringing in some $40 million in revenues and should be profitable by the end of the year, said Westergren on NBC's Press:Here. (The show airs Sunday, but you can watch it online now.) Most interesting were Westergren's comments about advertising. As you can see in the clip below, the show's host, Scott McGrew, and my co-panelist, NPR's Laura Sydell, claim to be huge Pandora fans but couldn't seem to remember hearing many ads. Said Westergren: That means we're doing it right. He said when he talks to Pandora users they always say they don't hear many ads, and they don't think they interact with the site much. In reality, users are hearing a good number of ads and most go to the site six times per hour to thumb up and down ads, where they get served another visual ad. “[Users] are always shocked to hear the actual data,” he said after the taping. “I think it’s because the interaction doesn’t feel like work. It’s a natural instinct tied to the ability to affect the listening, and it’s rewarding.” He added that click-through rates are way above industry average, which he credits to knowing each user’s taste so well. Depending on the product it can be ten times greater than the industry average. Pandora also has more creative ways of advertising. Westergren also talked off camera about a recent gig in LA for Aimee Mann. Pandora sent an email to users in driving distance of the club that it knew loved her music and the venue quickly filled up. "Can we do this every night?" the club owner panted. Pandora didn’t charge the club anything for this, but there’s clear opportunity to do so. This kind of promotion plays directly to Pandora's strengths especially now that it's on iPhones, Palm Pre and Android. While people gush today about Spotify's ability to play your music on any device and its a beautiful UI, Pandora's offering has always been about discovery. The heart of it is the "Music Genome Project," which analyzes why you like a song and gives recommendations based on the song's inherent characteristics, not what other people who liked that song also enjoy. If it can translate that to the physical world of gigs, it could do for venue owners and artists what Travelocity and Expedia first did for airlines—fill empty seats that are worthless once a gig is over. That's not only an "ad" that has value, it's one that actually uses the unique interactive elements of the mobile Web. “This is the part of Pandora’s future that I’m most excited about,” Westergren said. “I wish they had this when I was in a band!” Pandora may just be hitting on that much-talked-about but mostly elusive online advertising Holy Grail: Ads that users actually want. If they pull it off, and avoid the far-too-crowded online music graveyard, Pandora will be a textbook case for why execution matters more than vision in tech. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Google Hits Back At AT&T Over New Google Voice FCC Complaint Posted: 25 Sep 2009 03:28 PM PDT
For those who missed the initial letter: AT&T has long had to deal with local phone carriers who charge exorbitant prices to long-distance companies to connect their calls. These local carriers are further exploiting the system by partnering with phone sex operators and similar services to maximize the number of calls to these high-priced numbers. AT&T has tried to restrict such calls but was barred from doing so, and it’s angry that Google Voice — which does restrict calls to some of these pornographic numbers to save money — is getting away with it. Google’s response outlines AT&T’s concerns over the local operator abuses and actually says that it too believes the current carrier compensation system is “badly flawed.” But then it goes on to say that none of this should apply to Google Voice, because it’s not a phone service. Google writes that AT&T has tried to “blur the distinction between Google Voice and traditional phone service”, then offers the following bullets as evidence for why they are different:
Finally, Google closes out the letter by saying:
So who is right? Google may well be correct in its interpretation of the current open Internet principles, and given AT&T’s history of fighting against net neutrality it’s hard not to take its arguments for it with a nice big grain of salt. That said, the notion that a call traveling directly over carrier lines should be treated differently than those that go though software applications seems to be a distinction that is quickly blurring. And from the consumer’s perspective, having some phone services that can call any number and others that come with restrictions seems like a setup that’s ripe for confusion. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Measy Helps You Pick Gadgets With A Quiz (Private Beta Invites) Posted: 25 Sep 2009 03:26 PM PDT Picking out the right gadget to buy is so difficult that an entire publishing industry (Cnet, Engagdet, CrunchGear, GDGT) has grown around helping people sort through the process. A new site in private beta called Measy is taking a different approach. You take a quiz answering questions about what you are looking for in a digital camera, flat-screen TV, or netbook, and it comes up with the gadgets that match your requirements. We have invites for the first 200 people who redeem them here with the promotion code “techcrunchfriends.” Measy’s CEO Ian Manheimer is the creator of Glassbooth, a site which helped voters pick candidates based on taking a quiz about their political views and then matching those up with candidates’ positions. Measy takes a similar approach to helping people make decisions about what gadgets they should buy. Visitors set their budget and answer questions, pick brand preferences, and answer questions about what features, specs, and size they are looking for. For instance, the digital camera quiz asks how important is brand, picture quality, recording videos. The HDTV quiz asks about viewing angles and sound quality. After you answer all the questions, it presents you with the single best match, and you can also browse other close matches. (Contrast this to the crowdsourced wiki approach at GDGT). While all of this sounds great in theory, the truth is that there are always a couple of factors that are more important than others to any given consumer. Measy seems to weight all the factors roughly the same. It is not going to eliminate the research you need to do before you buy your next gadget, but at least it gives you a starting point and helps cut down the overwhelming number of initial choices. When it comes to finding the best digital camera or TV, there never is one right answer, as much as we all wish that there was. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Squidoo Backs Down On ‘Brand Campaign’ As Many Are ‘Not so Happy’ About It Posted: 25 Sep 2009 03:11 PM PDT Squidoo founder and author Seth Godin has backed down on creating company pages by default as part of their new ‘Brands In Public’ service that launched a few days ago. The idea behind the new service is that brands are able to track feedback from customers on a public ‘lens’ (aka. a web page). Feedback is aggregated from multiple sources, but mostly twitter and mostly by matching against the brand name. The concept itself is not an evil one, but Squidoo setup feedback pages for over 200 brands at launch without the express permission from the vast majority of them. The hitch was that if a brand wanted to control the lens and the feedback, they would have to pay Squidoo $400 a month – and it was that part of the deal that made a large number of people rightfully angry. Godin says in a blog post today that they will remove the brands they created by default, and instead make the program opt-in. This is a big step back from yesterday where he left a comment on an excellent blog post by Lisa Barone, who criticized the product as being ‘brandjacking’, by saying:
Godin has built a reputation, on the back of his books, as being a marketing and community guru. He must have read some of his own work overnight because today on his blog he says the policy has changed to:
Godin opens his post today with:
Well we know he didn’t hear that ‘direct feedback’ using Squidoo’s own ‘Brands in Public’ page, which during the storm yesterday conspicuously didn’t mention a single point of negative feedback about the campaign. Godin also does not have comments enabled on his blog, but the launch of the new Squidoo service just happen to time with the launch of Google Sidewiki – which allows users to leave notes on a website. Many flocked to Sidewiki out of frustration, including SearchEngineLand editor Danny Sullivan, and left constructive and well thought out arguments against ‘Brands In Public’. It is ironic that the ‘customer feedback’ for a product that is meant to aggregate just that all came from other sources such as sidewiki, blog posts, twitter and comments on blogs. We were going to reach out to Godin yesterday, but instead figured we could write this story by aggregating what everybody in the world thinks of Squidoo, and then asking him to pay us $400 to remove the parts he may not agree with. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Chinese iPhone Pricing Revealed: It’s The Exact Opposite Of Ours Posted: 25 Sep 2009 03:00 PM PDT  China Unicom, the country's second-largest carrier, will offer the iPhone starting in mid-October. And in pricing that is rather the opposite of the low upfront cost and high monthly pricing at AT&T, they'll be selling the device almost at cost and pairing it with plans that make ours look positively extortionate. Prices will start around $300 for an 8GB iPhone 3G, which seems a bit high until you consider the fact that they'll be paying less than $20 per month for service.TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| AT&T Goes After Google Voice, Net Neutrality And Double Standards (Full Letter To FCC) Posted: 25 Sep 2009 02:19 PM PDT
While AT&T may have not blocked Google Voice from being on the iPhone, it clearly does not like the service (no surprise there). From AT&T’s letter:
Yes, AT&T is calling out Google for violating net neutrality principles. Here’s where this gets pretty interesting. AT&T is really upset because they tried to do the same thing a couple years ago. Back in 2007, AT&T and the other telecos were trying to block access to some rural phone customers because the giants felt local carrier fees were too high, WSJ reports. Google has acknowledged that it does block some access, but says that it’s to things like adult voice lines. That’s obviously a big difference, but AT&T is claiming that Google doing exactly what it was banned from doing by the FCC two years ago. From Reuters:
And so now we’re stuck with the rather humorous situation where AT&T is playing the net neutrality card. Of course, what’s hilarious here is that AT&T (and Verizon) just got done saying that net neutrality should not apply to wireless communications mere days ago. AT&T is trying to argue there’s a difference between regular Internet net neutrality and wireless net neutrality, but that’s garbage. More and more, the lines are blurring with the way people access the web. Sure, it used to the case that people used wireless lines only for phone calls and text messages, but the rapid rise of smartphones and other mobile devices that use things like AT&T’s 3G wireless cards have changed everything. Meanwhile Google, a huge proponent of net neutrality, also appears to be going against it in this case. What a mess. Both of these companies need to realize that you can’t be selectively for and against net neutrality. Update: Google has responded on its public policy blog. Basically, they are saying that software should not have to be regulated by net neutrality rules, despite what AT&T says. Interesting, but it seems that Google Voice is going well beyond the range of your typical software. We’ll have more on this shortly.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| TransFS Launches Comparison Shopping Site For Credit Card Processing Fees Posted: 25 Sep 2009 02:12 PM PDT Accepting credit cards is crucial for any merchant but the obvious downside of this are the associated credit card processing fees which can amount to significant chunks of change. Usually fees range anywhere between 2 percent and 4 percent. Startup TransFS is hoping to help businesses sort through this issue by offering a comparison shopping website for credit card processing fees. On TransFS, businesses submit information about their transactions including the percentage of online, in-store, mail-order and phone transactions; the merchant’s current credit-card processing fees; and monthly volume of sales and average transaction size. This is all variable information used by processing firms when determining fees for a particular merchant. Once a merchant submit the form, their “auction” will begin. They will be presented with a series of competing bids from credit card processing companies and can review each proposal and select the bid that saves the most money. Bids are presented side by side to help users compare offers more easily and TransFS will also show businesses how much they will save vs. the fees associated with their existing credit card processing service. It’s a fairly simple and transparent process. TransFS says that from the data collected from beta testers, their comparison engine can save businesses and average of 40 percent from their credit card processing. Another comforting feature is that TransFS vets all bidders in the site to make sure the the companies can put the money where their mouth is, so to speak. The engine is completely free to the business or merchant and generates a small revenue from the processors if, and only if, a business chooses a new processor. And TransFS won’t pass on any merchant contact info to the bidders on the site until the business chooses a winning bidder (at which point the site only passes the info on to the winning bidder), assures TransFS’s co-founder and COO Eric Olsen. Olsen says that TransFS will eventually extend its comparison shopping engine functionality to help companies compare employee health insurance fees, payroll processing, and property insurance. TransFS faces competition from lead-gen sites like BuyerZone.  Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Spotted: Ultimate Apple Fanboy Visits The Mothership Posted: 25 Sep 2009 01:28 PM PDT
Just look at the license plate of the car that was parked at Apple HQ this morning. For those non-religious readers, or those less versed in comedy, I’ll go ahead and spell it out for you. WWSJD stands for What Would Steve Jobs Do? — a take on the popular religious meme WWJD? which stands for What Would Jesus Do? Yes, this person is directly relating Steve Jobs to Jesus. And yes, they’re at Apple HQ today. Steve Jobs, if you are reading this, you may want to hide in your office. Stalker alert! Or what if this person actually works at Apple? Awkward. Update: Word is that this actually is someone who works at Apple. Again, awkward. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Posted: 25 Sep 2009 12:25 PM PDT Editor’s note: This guest post is written by Shelby Bonnie, the CEO of Whiskey Media. He co-founded CNET in 1993 and was the Chairman and CEO from 2000 to 2006. He served as Chairman of the IAB from 2001 to 2003. Whiskey Media is a content platform with three sites, giantbomb.com, comicvine.com, and animevice.com lots more to come. OK, Advertising Week just ended… does anyone else feel like the online advertising industry is the orchestra, playing on while the Titanic is sinking? We have a problem, folks. And I, for one, think we should start to fix it by killing off the CPM, once and for all. I have been in the Internet media space for 16 years and will start by stating the obvious: The CPM has done more to stunt innovation and drag down quality products than any single thing on the Internet. Maybe it works in other mediums, but it sure as hell doesn’t work on the Internet. Having been both a small and big publisher (now small again), it’s been my experience that the collective focus on CPMs and counting eyeballs by marketers, agencies, and publishers has led to a whole mess of unintended consequences that have produced a series of “solutions” that work for none of those parties. And perhaps more importantly, it’s been terrible for users. All campaigns start with the best of intentions: “let’s do something creative, engaging, and unique!” But unless someone really senior from the agency or client side intervenes, the road for a campaign always leads to the media buyer and the dreaded spreadsheet, where the two most important columns are impressions and cost. Ironically, there’s usually some good stuff in campaigns, but they are thrown in for free as “value adds.” At some point, publishers decide that if all clients care about is impressions, then OK, we’ll give them impressions. The output is an industry that overproduces shallow, superficial, commoditized impressions. Why do we have so many bad sites that republish the same junky content–content that’s often made by machines or $1-per-post contractors? Why do sites intentionally try to get us to turn lots of pages with tons of top 10 lists, photo galleries, or single-paragraph summaries of someone else’s story? In 2002, my first full year as Chairman of the IAB, we made a decision as an industry to kill the original small banner (468×60). Though it was the only unit that many of our partners accepted, if we didn’t kill it, the industry would have had a very difficult time moving past it. We had to be bold and take some risk, but at that time we ushered in the move towards larger ad units, a move that all agree was a big improvement. We are at a similar point today. The focus on CPM is causing a bunch of behavior that is bad for publishers, marketers, and users. Only by killing it do we have the opportunity to invent our new future. Why is the CPM such a problem?
What will a new solution need?
What about the CPA or CPC?
Where do we start?
I certainly don’t have all the answers myself, but as a veteran of this space and someone who deeply cares about the medium, it is about time we all make a concerted effort to change our direction. I would love to hear your thoughts (shelbyb [at] whiskeymedia [dot] com). Photo credit: Flickr/SuperFantastic Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Anchors Away! Google Now Has Search Results Within Search Results Posted: 25 Sep 2009 12:20 PM PDT
A new feature in Google Search results lets you jump right to a specific area on a page. For example, if you’re looking for “good cholesterol level,” Google’s first result is a page entitled “What Your Cholesterol Levels Mean.” The good cholesterol level is a part of that, but further down the page. But now in Google’s results, you will find a “Jump to Your HDL (good) cholesterol level” directly underneath the main result. Clicking on it will take you right to that section on the page. This idea of being able to jump to specific sections of a page is hardly a new one. Anchor tags have been around forever in HTML to allow you to do this. But previously, Google didn’t pick up on them. Now it apparently is. It’s a small, but nice feature and it will be interesting to see if this leads to a anchor tag resurgence. And yes, I know the song is “Anchors Aweigh.” [photo: flickr/southern comfort] Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Browser Plugin Shareaholic Passes 1 Million Downloads, Closes Seed Funding Posted: 25 Sep 2009 11:56 AM PDT
Shareaholic’s functionality is fairly straightforward. You find a site you like, click on the plugin’s button nestled in your browser toolbar, and choose which service you’d like to share it to (there’s dozens of options, including sites like Facebook, Digg, and delicious). This functionality isn’t especially unique — there are plenty of other apps that make it easy to share interesting websites and media with friends. But Shareaholic does have the advantage of being compatible with every major browser, including support for IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari. And perhaps more important is the startup’s success at grabbing attention of the browser makers themselves: Shareaholic is a featured Firefox extension (it’s shown on the browser’s ‘Get Started’ page) and Microsoft has previously distributed it preinstalled with some copies if Internet Explorer 8. Along with its impressive 1 million download stat, Shareaholic has gotten some other notable accolades: it won Mozilla’s Extend Firefox contest last year, was featured in Microsoft’s IE8 keynote, and, yes, it was even mentioned in the book Twitter For Dummies. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Hey, Disco Party People, How About Some Windows 7 Commercials? Posted: 25 Sep 2009 11:02 AM PDT  It's not a Windows 7 Party without some tunes, right? Thankfully Microsoft has created a set of commercials with catchy beats, nice visuals, and no stilted, low-paid actors apparently preparing to get it on in the worst Cinemax late night movie ever. Enduserblog has all of the videos for your perusal but I picked out a few more good ones after the jump.TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Twitter Closes Its $100 Million Round Posted: 25 Sep 2009 10:22 AM PDT The big news yesterday was that Twitter raised another $100 million. Today, Twitter CEO Evan Williams confirms in a blog post that the company did indeed close a new round of funding. The new investors in the round are Insight Venture Partners and T. Rowe Price. Existing investors Institutional Venture Partners, Spark Capital and Benchmark Capital also put in more money. Williams did not disclose the size of the round or the valuation, but as we first reported earlier this month the valuation is believed to be $1 billion. This latest round brings the total amount raised by the company to $155 million over the past two years. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Today is MMS On iPhone Day. Did Yours Kick In Yet? Posted: 25 Sep 2009 09:48 AM PDT  It's time to go back, folks. Waaay back. Back to a simpler time; back when the government was busy with Enron and leaving No Child Behind. Back when the best Nintendo handheld the world knew had one screen and looked vaguely like a clam, and smart phones cost upwards of $600 - on contract. We're talking, of course, about 2002. Why are we having this little time travel adventure, you ask? Because 2002 also happens to be the same year MMS, otherwise known as "Multimedia Messaging Service" or "How people send inappropriate pictures to each other when they're drunk", made its big debut. Today, just 819 days and 3 models after launch, AT&T's iPhone has found this futuristic feature. We loves us some iPhone around these parts - but anybody who thinks its acceptable that it took AT&T this long to get a feature found on every dumbphone since 2003 onto their flagship handset is taking too many sips of the fanboy juice. Update: The update seems to have just gone live.TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Songkick Integrates Twitter To Make Gig Reviews Realtime Posted: 25 Sep 2009 09:29 AM PDT
When a user goes to a show, Songkick automatically pulls in tweets that they write during the concert as realtime, live reviews. The tweets are from actual gig-goers, making this way more valuable than just pulling in generic artist searches. This looks like the first time anyone has done this. Furthermore the tweets are then preserved for all time on the dedicated Songkick concert page for that gig, foiling Twitter’s annoying ability to lose Tweets after a week or so in search. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Localyte Launches iPhone App To Be Your Personal Sherpa Posted: 25 Sep 2009 08:55 AM PDT Travel site Localyte has a new twist on travel advice—the site tries to connect travelers with locals in their destination to serve as guides or just to get advice. Locals in communities around the world vary from professional tour guides who charge for the custom tours to everyday people who simply want to help folks enjoy their hometown as much as possible. Since late 2007, Localyte has accumulated 40,000 local guides in about 10,000 destinations across 160 countries. The site also offers reviews and listings of local activities. Now, Localyte is furthering its mobile strategy by launching PocketSherpa, a free iPhone app that integrates its online platform onto a mobile device, letting travelers access local guides and information (from WikiTravel) on the go. The app lists tours and contact info in cities and also lists local travel guides in those cities who are available to answer any questions. For example, if you were traveling in Egypt, you could ask “Are there any hot air balloon rides available over the Pyramids?” Localyte’s CEO Guillermo Baensch says that locals answer the questions fairly quickly, within a few hours at most. You can also access threads of previous questions that were submitted in your destination. Localyte’s app has a built-in mailbox that lets you send and receive messages, and also lets you see local newspapers in the region where you are traveling. So how does Localyte get locals to participate? Baensch says that Localyte engages people around the world through social networks, such as Facebook. From glancing at Localyte’s Facebook page, you can see that locals seem enthusiastic to help show travelers around in their native countries. Of course, there is not shortage of mobile applications that provides useful services to travelers, making it a very competitive space. But Baensch says that in the week that the app hit the app store, it quickly rose to be listed as one of the top 15 travel apps in the App Store. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
I've always liked how outspoken Tim Westergren of Pandora is. He's not one of those all-too-common founders who puffs up his chest and gives rationalizations for why everything is great even as user numbers are sliding or a competitor is stealing momentum. When his company is in trouble—which Pandora was for most of its life—he'll tell you in excruciating detail, even down to ugly employee lawsuits.
Earlier today news 
It’s mildly annoying when I’m searching for something specific and Google returns results that are led by a huge overview page like the ones found on Wikipedia. I usually just use the Cached option to locate the information that I’m looking for, since that highlights the keywords in the resulting page. But now Google has a better option.
Hot London-based live music startup 
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