The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Warner Music Negotiates More Control In YouTube Deal. Could This Be Trouble For VEVO?
- Google Wave Starts Rolling, Picks Up Over 100,000 New Riders
- Mint Widget And Other YAP Apps Make It To Yahoo’s Home Page
- IPad Rumors Abound! Apple To Announce On January 19! Device Shipping In May!
- Disney To Put An End To Those Pesky Paper Books By Putting Them Online
- mSpot Launches Web-Based Mobile Movie Streaming Service
- Wize Redesigns Product Review Search Engine
- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: Chrome And Safari Are Rounding Errors
- Savings.com Brings Great Web Deals To Personal Finance Service moneyStrands
- Guest Post: The Madness Stops Here — Don’t Pay VCs Fees
- It’s Money In The Bank: BillShrink Now Helps Choose Your Ideal Savings Account
- gpsAssassin Could Be The iPhone’s Next Highly Addictive Hit Game
- EnticeLabs Raises $2 Million From First Advantage and Omniture Founders
- Gnip Clips 60 Percent Of Staff
- Lighthouse SQ 7: A “Social Media Tablet” With Voice Recognition
- Outright.com Leaves Beta, Adds New Partners To Streamline Small Business Accounting
- Project Playlist Pushes The Line Between Music Search And Music Hosting
- You’re Worth It: How the “Premium” Perception Is Changing the Way We Buy Gadgets
- Preview: Tweetie 2 Takes The Best iPhone Twitter App And Ups The Sex Appeal
- Google Docs Become More Student-Friendly
- Twitter Continues Talent Scoop, Takes Digg’s UX Guy
- Tweetimag.es: An End To Broken Twitter Avatars
- Newegg’s IPO Filing Reveals The Financials Behind A $2 Billion Electronics Retailer
- YouTube Tries To Win Over Media Partners With More Data
- MySpace Floods Twitter With Status Updates; Now No. 2 Source of Short Links.
| Warner Music Negotiates More Control In YouTube Deal. Could This Be Trouble For VEVO? Posted: 29 Sep 2009 08:51 AM PDT
The deal could prove to be a sign of things to come for YouTube’s premium content, especially since the site has left the door open to special branding on Warner’s music pages that would make it clear who the content owner is. YouTube says that it’s working with WMG to define the optimal experience for the user and the artist, and this may well wind up looking significantly different from YouTube’s standard viewing page. That may be bad news to VEVO, the satellite “Hulu for music videos” site that’s currently being built by Universal Music Group in partnership with YouTube. Sony has signed on to distribute its content through the site, but EMI and Warner are hold-outs. VEVO is supposed to give users a more fleshed out music video experience, while giving the labels a better controlled and more appealing place to sell advertising against their videos. But given the new abilities being granted to Warner with today’s deal — including the right to customize the page layout and sell its own advertising — Warner now seems to have even less of an incentive to join the VEVO initiative than it did before. That spells trouble for VEVO, because the site will really only be appealing if it can get all four labels on-board. Even if VEVO turns out to have a great viewing experience, that’s really only half the battle — users are more likely to go to a site that has the music video they want every time than they are to one that’s hit-or-miss. Of course, the site most people will turn to will be YouTube itself, which does feature videos from all four labels (MySpace Music does as well). 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 Wave Starts Rolling, Picks Up Over 100,000 New Riders Posted: 29 Sep 2009 08:00 AM PDT
Ambitious as Wave was, there were still some rough edges. We were granted access to the developer’s preview shortly after Google I/O, and it was clear that while the basic frame of all this great promise was there, there were no shortage of bugs to be ironed out. And that’s exactly what the Wave team has been doing the past four months, developer Lars Rasmussen tells us. And now they feel the product is ready to be given to a much bigger audience, as they will open it up to over 100,000 new users today. To be clear: This is not a public launch. Wave is still not ready for that yet, Rasmussen emphasizes. Instead, Google has looked over the applications that were filed over the past four months to test out the service and is handing out invites to users who expressed interest early, and also made it clear that they were willing to test software that still contained bugs. Unfortunately, not everyone that expressed interest will get an invite today, but Rasmussen assures us that more will be coming on a regular basis, provided that everything goes well with this expanded test. This 100,000+ user test is focusing on three groups: The public users who signed up early to test, developers, and a select group of Google Apps users. The last group will be kept very small, and the team expects it will only go out to select schools in the Sydney area so that the team can do some hands-on work with students and faculty that use the product. The first two groups, the developers and the public, will make up the core audience of Wave now, after these past months of being available only to a select group of developers. But the key to Wave is interaction, which the team knows. As such, they are also giving every user that gets an invite today, 8 other invites to hand out to friends. That should expand the test even further very rapidly. But no, those friends will not get invite codes to hand out as well. I sat down and used Google Wave for the first time in weeks yesterday, and the ride is definitely smoother. While there are no shortage of new features that the team is dreaming up and is eager to begin work on, they have been solely focused on fixing bugs, making things faster, and improving the usability. “It will crash less, which is pretty flashy,” Rasmussen jokes. Also undergoing a lot of changes has been the API. And that’s a big part of what else will be launching alongside these new invites: Featured Extensions. While Wave is a product, the larger goal for the project is to make it into a communications platform. And that means they’re going to need third-party developers on board, working to build stuff on top of Wave. That work is already well underway, and Google plans to highlight several extensions that have already been built and are in working order. These include a Suduko game (that you play entirely inside Wave in real-time with your friends), a Ribbit conference call gadget, a weird and fun video chat gadget by 6rounds (we’ve covered them here), and a trip-planning gadget by Lonely Planet. Each of these gadgets takes only two clicks on install, and you can begin using them socially within Wave. Bigger picture: There are also large companies working on their own Wave ideas for how to use the communications tool. These include companies like Salesforce.com, we’re told. Google is also moving Wave out of its sequestered sandbox site and into the wave.google.com domain where it will permanently reside. Because of this, users who get invites will now also be able to sign up with their actual email addresses (previously, you had to create a new special Google Wave addresses). This will give you access to your Gmail contact list, which Wave will automatically scan to find other Wave users you may know. As Google so often likes to say these days, Wave will work on all modern browsers. That means, Chrome, Safari (3 and 4), and Firefox 3.5 and up. Yes, Wave will work on Internet Explorer, but if you visit the page in that browser, you will be asked if you would like to install ChromeFrame, Google’s hilarious alternative to downloading another web browser (if you must keep IE for some reason). Wave works okay in IE, but in IE with ChromeFrame, it’s extremely fast, Rasmussen says. So when will we see a full launch of Wave? While the team declined to give a specific time-table, they did say that it will definitely be 2010, and alluded to the fact that it should be the first half of 2010. They also noted that one key next step will be to provide support for other languages. Right now, Chrome is English-only, even though it has tools built in that translate its content to any other language. So check your inboxes for those Wave invites. And if you know of friends using it, hit them up for an invite as well. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Mint Widget And Other YAP Apps Make It To Yahoo’s Home Page Posted: 29 Sep 2009 07:16 AM PDT With the new Yahoo homepage that was previewed last July and is now rolling out more broadly as part of Yahoo’s new “It’s Y!ou” branding exercise, the main Yahoo homepage is taking on more of the personalization features on MyYahoo. There are all sorts of handy widgets in the left-hand column ranging from Facebook status updates to Gmail to any news feed (just type in a URL like Techcrunch.com and it will add the feed). When you hover over any of the widgets, a box opens up covering most of the homepage with information from that widget. Today, Yahoo is making it possible to add applications made on the Yahoo Application Platform (YAP) to that sidebar as well. One of the first apps it is launching with is from personal finance tracker Mint, with its Budget by Mint widget. Other YAP apps launching today on the homepage include A-Z Wine Pairings from MyRecipes & Snooth, Books weRead by WeRead, Brain Trainer by Lumosity, a social version of the Flood-it game by LabPixies, kaChing’s virtual stock portfolio app, Movies by Flixter, and WordPRess QuickPress. YAP is part of Yahoo’s Open Strategy that it kicked off last year. The Budget by Mint widget and other YAP apps are already available on MyYahoo, but getting on the main Yahoo homepage potentially puts it on front of 118 million American users a month, versus 25 million for My Yahoo (comScore). The app ties into your Mint account, and shows pie charts and bar graphs of your budget, spending trends, and alerts. You can see the percentage of your budget that is going to taxes, shopping, dining, bills, and other expenses, and even share that with your friends if you are into that sort of personal financial transparency. Mint launched two years ago at TechCrunch40, and was bought by Intuit for $170 million earlier this month. Here is what the Budget by Mint widget looks like when it opens up in Yahoo: Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| IPad Rumors Abound! Apple To Announce On January 19! Device Shipping In May! Posted: 29 Sep 2009 07:05 AM PDT  Jeremy "The Animal" Horowitz just posted a list of exciting new rumors about the iPad including the announce date - around January 19, just in time to relegate CES news to the dustbin of history - and that it will be available in May. The device is just awaiting Steve Jobs' signature on the dotted line. There will be two devices, a 3G and a non-3G version and the resolution will be 720p or so on 10.7-inch screen. It will also run iPhone OS and have dedicated media systems as well as an ebook reader built in.TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Disney To Put An End To Those Pesky Paper Books By Putting Them Online Posted: 29 Sep 2009 06:39 AM PDT
That said, you can probably tell what I think of these online versions of over 500 Disney books available now at DisneyDigitalBooks. Kids can read over 500 Disney books, make their own books, and even “befriend Disney characters,” as creepy as that sounds.
Add in wonky stuff like this request for a D-Name and the fact that this automatically enrolls you into Disney.com, entitling you to free spam, is an extra bit of insult to injury. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| mSpot Launches Web-Based Mobile Movie Streaming Service Posted: 29 Sep 2009 05:45 AM PDT Mobile entertainment startup mSpot is launching its Mobile Movies site, which will let users stream full-length movies on their mobile phones. Movies will be available on 30 different smart phones, including the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices and via all four major U.S. carriers. To access mSpot Mobile Movies, users can go to mSpot’s mobile site on their phone, and use a credit card to rent individual movies for $4.99 each, or subscribe to a monthly membership at $9.99 (for four movies), $12.99 or $15.99 per month. Based on the movie, rentals could last anywhere from 24 hours to 5 days. The movie will launch within the browser and is powered by the phone’s native media player. mSpot has struck deals with Paramount, Universal and The Weinstein Company to stream movies onto mobile devices and at launch has 350 movies available on its streaming platform. mSpot’s movies are mainly new releases, says Daren Tsui, CEO of mSpot. Of course, mSpot’s main competition is Apple, which lets iPhone and iPod touch users, download and sync movies and shows onto their devices. But Tsui says the beauty of mSpot is that there’s no downloading or syncing process with a computer; you can simply start streaming a movie with a click of a button. Of course, mSpot will face other series competition from Netflix or Hulu, if either of their iPhone app rumors are true. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Wize Redesigns Product Review Search Engine Posted: 29 Sep 2009 04:25 AM PDT  Product reviews, both from users and experts, are an integral part of the shopping process. Generally, I scour the web for both negative and positive reviews, across multiple sites before purchasing ant type of gadget. Product recommendation research engine Wize has launched a redesigned version of its platform that aggregates reviews from across the web. Launched in 2006, Wize lets consumers search for reviews on electronics, home goods, video games, health products and more. It searches shopping sites with user reviews, such as Amazon and BestBuy, as well as expert reviews from traditional product review sites. Wize's technology has been tweaked to read reviews across the web and then analyze what people have said is good, bad or important using real everyday language (i.e. Very Portable, Great for sports!). So shoppers can indicate in their product review search that they are looking for a camera that is “very portable” or “good for vacations” and they will receive recommendations with that language. Along with a technology overhaul, Wize has added a host of new features including “Wize Choice Recommendations,” which is an authoritative opinion of the best and worst products available on the Web, based on Wize's proprietary analysis engine; and gives users the ability to see reviews by product or by a category or consumer need (i.e. MP3 accessories). Wize will also let you save and organize your searches relating to a given product, making it easier to the user to save research. And Wize is becoming a little more social by pulling in real-time feeds from Twitter that have mentions of products. I’m a fan of Wize’s tweaked site, which gives consumers a in-depth look at what people are saying about a particular product. The startup, which has raised $4 million in funding, faces competition from Retrevo, ReviewGist and ViewScore.  Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: Chrome And Safari Are Rounding Errors Posted: 29 Sep 2009 03:44 AM PDT
In the second post we did a deeper dive on his thoughts on big business opportunities for Microsoft in the next 5 – 10 years. Here we focus on his thoughts on the competitive landscape around operating systems and browsers. And Ballmer has lots to say on the subject. Particularly because Microsoft has fresh browser and OS products in the pipe: IE8 launched earlier this year and Windows 7 launches on October 22. We jumped right into the conversation by bringing up the 2001 consent decree with the Department of Justice and various other governmental bodies that, among other things, prohibited Microsoft from bundling Windows and IE for competitive purposes. But the landscape has changed a lot in the last eight years. And Microsoft’s competitors are doing exactly what Microsoft is prohibited from doing – bundling an operating system and a browser. Heck, Google didn’t even change the brands. Chrome is both a browser and a desktop operating system. Ballmer says the notion of an operating system being distinguished from the browser is no longer sensible:
He elaborates, arguing that there isn’t really any distinction between the browser and the operating system – both are operating systems. Except for the hardware drivers, of course. And oh boy do we agree. Says Ballmer:
When it comes to browsers, Ballmer calls Chrome and Safari rounding errors. And he certainly noticed Google’s attempts to turn IE into Chrome via a plugin:
Clearly fired up, Ballmer also wonders at Google’s attempts to build two operating systems (Android and Chrome). It’s confusing, he says, and doesn’t help with interoperability. Microsoft has Windows for the desktop and Windows Mobile, and he says that he thinks about ways for Windows and Windows Mobile to “share more” every day. Google must have gotten Android wrong, he says, to have started to focus on Chrome. “In the OS business, it’s generally advisable to get it right and stay right.” He elaborates:
And he’s not done yet. In a fascinating answer to my question on how Microsoft will compete with Android, Chrome, Safari, Linux and other operating systems, he begins a long discussion of competitive attack vectors on Windows/IE and how competitors are hitting Microsoft from all sides via true operating systems and browsers. He even drew a chart for me, although he wouldn’t let me take it with me. Here’s what he had to say:
There you have it. Ballmer sees a competitive landscape where Microsoft is surrounded by competing operating systems and browsers (which are also operating systems) and hobbled by a consent decree that limits their competitive response. But he doesn’t seem shaken by the threat. At the end of the day, one quote rings true from Ballmer: “In the OS business, it’s generally advisable to get it right and stay right.” The full transcript of this portion of the interview is below. Transcript: Mr. ARRINGTON: You’ve got Windows 7 launching when? What’s the date? Mr. BALLMER: 10/22. You know, Google is talking about building an operating system with the name of its browser. Nobody should be confused. The browser they think of is the operating system and the question is you know sort of like Marc Andreesen in the late ’90s is back at work at Google. If you remember, he said something like, Windows will just be a poorly debugged set of device drivers running Netscape. Phones, I think the jury is out. Nobody has yet tried to take the phone and turn it into a PC or take a PC and turn it into a phone. But this is where we have to be. We’re going to have it and we've got to have our phone act together. I like our 6.5 release. I like our plans for the future. But you know, we’re certainly in a period now where competition has got a lot more commotion. The most successful by far is Firefox. Chrome is a rounding error to date. Safari is a rounding error to date. But Firefox is not. The fact that there’s a lot of competitors probably is to our advantage. Yeah, we’re right now about 74 percent overall with the browser market, roughly speaking. But we’re having to compete like heck with IE 8, with great new features. The other guys are getting more and more unanticipated competitive attack factors, the thing that Google announced yesterday where they replaced IE but they don’t tell you. On the other hand, when we tell people the right applications which are not unique to Windows that doesn't particularly help Windows. And so we’ll continue to see and do things that are standard-based because that’s important. And you continue to see us encourage developers to do things that run uniquely on the Windows platform. You know, with the new Silverlight, you can build Silverlight applications that are flash-like in the sense that they run across platform. But you can also do things which are even nicer which really narrow down and run only on Windows. And given that Windows is a billion units, you can afford to make optimizations as long as they bring value and do your applications that are Windows unique. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Savings.com Brings Great Web Deals To Personal Finance Service moneyStrands Posted: 29 Sep 2009 02:56 AM PDT
Later today, content recommendation and discovery software builder Strands will announce that its personal finance subsidiary moneyStrands has teamed up with Savings.com to bring personalized online coupon recommendations to the company’s personal budgeting & online money management platform. Thanks to this partnership, moneyStrands users will now see a new widget dubbed "Special Offers" in the web app (under the "Just for Me" tab), which will display a number of personalized online coupons from a variety of stores and brands, recommended to each user based on his or her spending pattern as recorded on moneyStrands. Bringing web deals to a place where people manage their personal finances seems like a solid idea to me – particularly in a recession – so I’m surprised to note Strands is actually the first to incorporate custom coupons into a money management app. If its recommendation technology works as advertised and the feature gets noticed sufficiently by its users, this could be a beneficial partnership for both companies and a precursor to similar deals with similar service providers like Mint, Wesabe and the likes. To refresh your memory: moneyStrands was born out of Strands’ acquisitions of both Expensr and NetworthIQ back in May 2008. Savings.com has been around a bit longer: it was founded in 2004 and currently breaks about $10 million in revenues according to Mahalo CEO (and TechCrunch50 co-host) Jason Calacanis, who joined the Santa Monica, CA-based company’s board earlier this Summer. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Guest Post: The Madness Stops Here — Don’t Pay VCs Fees Posted: 29 Sep 2009 01:24 AM PDT
One reason I started this column is because I see a lot of "injustices" in the VC-start-up universe, and while I'm obviously aware that we don't work in the charity sector and that business is business — and we're here to maximise investment returns! — I do think we should let market forces determine what's reasonable or not for business practices and deal terms. However, this works only if entrepreneurs actually have access to experience and insight into what really has been "standard" or acceptable in the past. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| It’s Money In The Bank: BillShrink Now Helps Choose Your Ideal Savings Account Posted: 29 Sep 2009 01:03 AM PDT
If you’ve used any of BillShrink’s other services before — which include cost cutters for cell phone plans, gas stations, and credit cards — you’ll be right at home here. To get started, BillShrink asks you where you’re currently keeping your money, as well as the amount that’s in your account. It doesn’t ask for your bank credentials (people tend to be far more hestitant to give these up than they are for their phone bills), but it does automatically look up details like your current APY which isn’t unique to the user. Hit submit, and BillShrink will present a list of its top matches, taking into account each product’s interest rates and any restrictions that might be involved. And BillShrink goes far beyond just a basic listing. You can futher refine your results by specifying which features you want (for example, you might want to be able to withdraw money at ATMs, or get paper statements without an extra fee). You can also specify how long you’re willing to keep your money in an illiquid state, and if you enter your employer and region you can turn up special offers from smaller banks and credit unions. As with BillShrink’s other services, the new savings feature has a clean, intuitive interface. That said there is still some room for improvement — I think the site could do a better job at holding the user’s hand through the process. While BillShrink does a good job offering contextual explanations (say, how it calculated the fees associated with a given product), it doesn’t attempt to educate the user, so there’s a chance some users won’t know what some of the terms mean. BillShrink isn’t the first player here — BankRate.com has been a leader for quite a while, and Mint also offers a savings component that looks at savings accounts and CDs. But co-founder Samir Kothari says that BillShrink differs in a few key respects. For one, the site doesn’t offer any sponsored listings (both Mint and BankRate always show their sponsored products at the very top of the list, so you may not immediately notice the products that would give you the best returns). He also says that BillShrink’s customization options are more precise than what you’ll find on the other sites. BillShrink has been having a very strong year, with 1000% growth since the beginning of the year (they’re now up to over 650,000 monthly visitors) and some major marketing love from T-Mobile). Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| gpsAssassin Could Be The iPhone’s Next Highly Addictive Hit Game Posted: 28 Sep 2009 09:17 PM PDT
Founder Nicholas Holland says that he’s had some difficulty describing the game, largely because it looks very much iMob, Mafia Wars, and similar games that don’t rely on your location when you play them. And while gpsAssassin may share some of the same mechanics with these — it’s primarily text based with leveling, attack/armor ratings, and other key RPG elements — its location features turn it into a different beast entirely. After picking a nickname, the game presents you list of possible actions, the most important of which is “Scan for targets”. This will bring up a list of any players within a five mile radius (anyone within a two mile radius is shown under a list of ’short range’ targets). After tapping on someone’s nickname, you enter Attack mode, where you choose from a list of actions. This is where the game’s real fun kicks in: you can choose from a list of available attacks created by other users, which range from silly (’Throw Nail Polish” or “Robotic Kitty”) to more conventional forms of violence. Better yet, you can get creative and think up your own attack, which is especially fun when you personally know the person you’re attacking. Your target will then be informed that you’ve attacked them with whatever weapon you choose, and depending on your strength they’ll find out who emerged as the victor. This is all, of course, dependent on where you are physically located. If your favorite victim picks up shop and drives across town then you won’t be able to attack them with your ‘Gospel of Chuck Norris’ or ‘Mullet of Fury’. Holland says that gamers have been known to actually change their driving routes so that they can get in their attack on an unsuspecting victim and get out of dodge before they have a chance at retaliation. He also says that he’s seen neighboring offices band together to wage war against a cross-town competitor. Clearly, there’s plenty of room for friendly (or not so friendly) rivalries to emerge. While most people will probably spend most of their time thinking of especially infuriating (and hilarious) attacks, gamers can further boost their stats by fighting against non-player characters. And the game offers virtual goods that you can use to boost your stats and win/loss percentage without the time investment, which is where the game will make most of its money. The application has been available in beta since February but Holland staggered its release by initially pricing it at $5.00, then $.99. Now that it’s ready for mass consumption, gpsAssassin is available for free, though there are a handful of premium versions that come with more of the game’s virtual currency. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| EnticeLabs Raises $2 Million From First Advantage and Omniture Founders Posted: 28 Sep 2009 08:11 PM PDT EnticeLabs, the Provo, Utah startup behind job ad network TalentSeekr, raised $2 million in a strategic seed round led by First Advantage, a publicly traded company which a recruiting arm. Existing angel investors, including Omniture co-founders Josh James and John Pestana, also invested. The company previously raised $1.3 million from angels two years ago. The company’s main product is an ad network for job recruiting called TalentSeekr. Employment ads are placed across the Web on social networks, industry forums, and blogs, where they are tested and optimized. It tries to target the most qualified job candidates where they naturally hang out online, instead of targeting only the unemployed on job boards. TalentSeekr is in private beta, but some companies already trying it out include IBM, GE, Dell, and Google. Last week, EnticeLabs also made an important hire of its own. One of Monster.com’s top sales reps, Cyndi Nicoletti, jumped ship to work for EnticeLabs. Maybe she saw one of their ads. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Gnip Clips 60 Percent Of Staff Posted: 28 Sep 2009 07:58 PM PDT API aggregation platform Gnip is laying off 7 out of its 12 employees, or 60 percent of the startup’s staff, we’ve confirmed with CEO and co-founder Eric Marcoullier. He says that Gnip is planning to hire an engineer in the near future, which will bring the final count back up to six employees. We’ve added the cuts to our Layoff Tracker. Gnip serves as an API hub, collecting data from services like Twitter, Facebook and Digg, and pushing it out to other data-consuming services and Websites. Data consuming sites using Gnip's platform can get public data streams for over 30 social media networks and sites, including Twitter, Digg, Delicious, YouTube, WordPress, Flickr, Six Apart and others without ever visiting those sites or accessing their individual APIs. Marcoullier says the reduction in headcount is necessary to streamline the business. Orginally, Gnip tried to build its own database, but it has seen a massive influx of data to the system, which Marcoullier estimates at around 150 million Tweets, status updates, Diggs and bookmarks pulled into the platform per day. Gnip has been forced to restart from the ground up when it comes to building a database that can be a central part of Gnip’s platform. It is abandoning its own effort and will move to an existing database that can be integrated into its service. This shift of focus and manpower has forced Gnip to re-structure its staff. But Marcoullier says that Gnip has a client base of “several dozen” companies that is still growing. A few months ago, Gnip released its own Push API which lets any site patch together its own version of a Friendfeed or Twitter-like data stream. The new service lets companies filter and white-label the stream so the technology is fully integrated into the business' infrastructure. Companies list out the most common data requests that are made on their APIs and websites and Gnip will collect the relevant data and deliver it in real-time to any approved third-party. For example, the service would let a travel site analyze real-time data, such as fluctuations in air fare, and syndicate changes in fare sales immediately. Gnip is also committed to help create 301works.org, a back-up directory for shortened links. Gnip is trying to build fundamental infrastructure for the real-time Web, but finding the right technology and business model is happening in fits and starts. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Lighthouse SQ 7: A “Social Media Tablet” With Voice Recognition Posted: 28 Sep 2009 04:55 PM PDT  Social media applications are increasingly abstracted from their web-app roots, be it in Adobe air or an iPhone app. Devices like the Chumby have made some inroads towards completely breaking something like Facebook away from your desktop, but they haven't been popular enough or good enough to catch on. I doubt that will change too much with the Lighthouse SQ7, but I'd be happy to be proved wrong. It's just that incorporating voice recognition technology into your device seems like overreaching, as cool as it would be if it worked. At any rate, it's good to see companies still plugging away at what seems like a sort of awkward tweener device, but honestly, one I might like to have around. A combination alarm clock, social media doodad, and lightweight browser — fitting somewhere on the twisted continuum between tablet computer and digital picture frame.TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Outright.com Leaves Beta, Adds New Partners To Streamline Small Business Accounting Posted: 28 Sep 2009 04:29 PM PDT
Getting started with the site is quite easy, because Outright has recently partnered with a number of financial services: you can import invoices from Freshbooks, receipts from Shoeboxed, your PayPal transaction history, as well as your credit card transactions through a deal with Expensify, which supports 94% of US credit cards. You only have to do this once — once you’ve linked your account, they’ll keep automatically updating until you unlink them. Once you’re done with the initial setup, everything on Outright is fairly self-explanatory (which is sort of the idea). The home screen presents you with a chart pitting your costs against your income to give you an at-a-glance look at your business’s health. At the top of the screen you’ll see tabs for Income, Expenses, Taxes, and Reports, where you can hone in on the transactions you’re looking for. Transactions are automatically sorted into different categories (for example, the site knows that your airline’s tickets belong under the ‘Travel’ category), and you can also generate reports on a per-customer basis, which would be helpful for eBay sellers. Beyond that the application helps with taxes by offering reminders when a deadline is coming up and an estimated amount that you’ll have to pay. Outright isn’t as robust as some other financial services out there, but if you’re looking to keep things simple it’s certainly worth a look. The company was formerly called GoBoostrap.com, but changed its name in conjunction with news of its $2 million funding in February.  Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Project Playlist Pushes The Line Between Music Search And Music Hosting Posted: 28 Sep 2009 02:38 PM PDT If there is a poster child for the battered Web music startup, Project Playlist is it. The company had to fight lawsuits from the record labels, is still trying to iron out licensing deals with those labels, lost its last CEO Owen van Natta to MySpace, lost its CFO Mike Sheridan, and by the looks of it is losing its audience. What else could go wrong? Well, it looks like the self-styled music search engine is actually hosting MP3s of major label artists via content delivery networks such as Limelight. If you search for Britney Spears songs, for example, the second result is “(You Drive Me) Crazy.” The originating site where the MP3 was hosted, http://www.sarzamin.org/, is no longer available. But not to worry because Project Playlist cached the song on its CDN, Limelight Networks. Khalid Shaikh, a TechCrunch reader and developer who wanted to harness Project Playlist to create his own music site, discovered this arrangement and sent me the screencast above to prove it. In the video, Shaikh speculates on the legality of this method of caching, which is impossible to say one way or the other without knowing the terms of Project Playlists’ licensing agreements with the labels. Project Playlist does have a licensing agreement with Sony, which owns the Zomba Label that Spears is on. But it certainly is a strange way to build a catalog of songs. And there are plenty of other examples, such as Alanis Morissette, who is on Warner Music, which is the one major lbel that still has not dropped its lawsuit against Project Playlist. Project Playlist bills itself as a music search engine that lets people share playlists, not the songs underlying those playlists per se. On its About page, here’s how the service describes itself:
and . . .
The site doesn’t say anything about caching songs which have been taken down, for whatever reason, from other sites. But it does raise some interesting questions. Has Project Playlist crossed the line from a music search engine merely indexing the music that is already freely available on the Web to a music hosting service (albeit through its CDN proxies)? Or is Project Playlist acting just like Google or any other search engine here, merely caching the most popular content in its index? When I contacted Josh Brooks, vice president of programming and content, he seemed genuinely surprised and said that this is the first time he’s ever seen anything like that. After viewing the screencsat, he says: “Watching that troubles me and it should trouble anyone trying to do anything n digital music. It is a problem that has to be fixed. All I can say is it is going to be remedied because it needs to be.” He also says that Project Playlist is in the middle of negotiations with labels to stream licensed songs directly: “Playlist.com technology neatly aggregates song searches on the web and directs a user to a stream of music from the site where the song is hosted. In the very near future, our hosted music service will find a linked stream and replace it with a stream from the broad library of music we have licensed. Users can then listen and share the music on Playlist.com or through an off-site embeddable player. There are dozens of linked services out there. Playlist is actively working with the content owners to insure proper reporting and accounting for music we have licenses for.” in other words, Project Playlist doesn’t want to be a music search engine anymore. It is already moving away from through the way that it is caching songs, but it needs to host those songs in a more straightforward manner if it wants the labels to take it seriously. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| You’re Worth It: How the “Premium” Perception Is Changing the Way We Buy Gadgets Posted: 28 Sep 2009 02:12 PM PDT
The PSP Go just launched and the blogworld is in a tizzy about the price – $249 – and the apparent chintziness of this new PSP replacement. You see, the device doesn’t support Sony’s exciting UMD optical standard and is generally reported as “feeling” cheaper than the bulky but solid PSP. The PSP Go also requires you to buy your old games in UMD-less form, at least for the time being. So basically you get a smaller device, are forced to pay for downloadable content you probably already own, and, according to the teardown we linked to above, you get a poorly-made device with quite a few extra potential points of failure. Why am I bringing up this litany of complaints? Because of something Sony execs said back in June, namely that they PSP Go is a premium product and was therefore priced higher than, say, the Nintendo Wii.
So what is this “premium” of which he speaks and why would you have been laughed out of your local Egghead if you had mentioned it maybe 15 years ago? Over the past few years manufacturers have jumped on the “premium” bandwagon. This has been especially apparent in the past year with HP, Dell, and even Asus creating “unique” products at a higher price to offset the cash they’re losing selling $299 laptops at Wal-Mart. For example, I have no fewer than three premium laptops in the house right now, and that’s not even mentioning the supposed premium offered by Apple in their MacBook Pro line. Premium in this case is a loaded word. What is premium anyway, but perceived value attributed to a device by price, design, or packaging? There is a lot to be said for the iPhone’s sexy box – it’s sealed in a coffin when you get it and it opens up with a puff of air reminiscent of opening a box from Tiffany or Cartier. A laptop I just tested came in that same sort of box and the Dell Adamo came in a plastic coffin that looked like it had been delivered via pneumatic tube from the inner sanctum of haute ordinateur designers. This is not to say that premium products aren’t worth it. I’d recommend a MacBook Pro over a standard laptop any day and I’d have a number of reasons for my recommendation. I always recommend Bose noise-cancellers when folks and not because I’m drinking the Bose Kool-Aid. But there is also a bad habit some manufacturers fall into that destroys the premium paradigm completely. This happens, when, like the PSPGo launch, the product clearly does not match up with its “premium” moniker. Sony, of late, has been the worst offender in the “false premium” market and it comes from a sense that their products are still leading in terms of mind share but they are definitely lagging in terms of quality, availability, and value. Samsung, too, has fallen into this trap and I would say that many point-and-shoot camera manufacturers create “false premium” products through the use of visual design cues to suggest quality (knurled knobs and analog read-outs are a big tip-off) while stuffing the same old gear into the same old boxes. If everything is premium, nothing is premium. Manufacturers have painted themselves into a corner. For the price of a nice meal in Midtown you can basically buy yourself a laptop or a smaller desktop. LCD monitors cost less than some keyboards and printers are basically free. Computing machinery, on the whole, is cheaper than it has ever been. But the tendency to create a two-tiered system is becoming disingenuous and difficult to take. While some companies know how to do it well – Apple and Bose are marketing geniuses who add a little value to commodity hardware and then add a few zeros to the price – but the rest of the manufacturers seem to be building “premium” models that never sell for an audience that doesn’t exist. Imagine an U-graph. On one side you have the “real” premium products like gaming machines and on the other you have the Wal-Mart specials. The valley between the consumer Apple is aiming at with the MBP and the consumer HP is aiming at with their cheap-o Wal-Mart specials is deep and wide, and it’s tough to move from one end to the other without creating problems of perception and losing value. Does HP make commodity consumer hardware or “high-end laptops?” It does both. Is the PSP Go a cheaper, fun game machine or a “high-end product for the gaming professional?” Who knows and, more importantly, who cares? Clearly Sony thinks no one does, more importantly, it believes it can get away with any number of shenanigans to make some profit. The same goes for any number of PC manufactures who are, currently, walking that thin line between quality and price. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Preview: Tweetie 2 Takes The Best iPhone Twitter App And Ups The Sex Appeal Posted: 28 Sep 2009 01:16 PM PDT
We’ve been testing out of the app for a few weeks now, and I’m happy to report that it’s the Tweetie you know and love, but better. Maybe you’ve seen some tweets from users in recent weeks labeled as coming from “Bigbird”? Yeah, that’s Tweetie 2.0. Some may recall that this was also the code name for Tweetie for the Mac right before it launched. The reason for the nickname is that Tweetie 2 is built on top of the Project Bigbird core, which Atebits developer Loren Brichter first developed for Tweetie for Mac. This means an iPhone Tweetie that is “faster, slimmer, and much more powerful,” as Brichter puts it. So what’s new? A lot. Here are the big ones. Persistence — Tweetie now remembers the last thing you were browsing when you closed the app. This means if you were on a user’s Twitter profile, you will go back there when you open the app again. New message indicators — When you have a new @reply or direct message, you will now see a glowing blue light below those sections to let you know. Scroll up to reload — Rather than having a separate reload button, to reload your main tweet stream, you simply now scroll up, hold for a second, and Tweetie will check for new tweets. More third-party service support — You can now use services such as Favstar.fm (which we’ve covered here), Tweet Blocker, and Follow Cost.
New tweet options — Bringing up the tweet box (the area where you write your tweets) if faster than ever. But there are also a range of new options if you hit the 140 character counter. You can now easily geotag tweets (presumably this will work with the Twitter Geolocation API when it goes live, but for now it inserts a Google Map link), search for hashtags to include, and even search the people you follow to find someone to @ reply to (this is very nice). Draft manager — If you’re the kind of person who writes tweets to send at a later time, Tweetie 2 has a draft manager where you can save multiple drafts of tweets. New tweet stream options — One of the nice features about Tweetie from the get go was that swiping a tweet to the right brought up a range of options for things you could do with that tweet. Tweetie 2 o offers even more of these including new ways to retweet, quote tweets, post a link to a tweet, mail tweets, and translate tweets. If there is a link in the tweet, you also have a bunch of options. Notifications — Yes, you can now get Push Notifications for specific users’ tweets on your device. [Update: My bad, these are not Push Notifications, but rather a way to toggle on and off the SMS notifications that Twitter sends.] Create iPhone contacts from Twitter profiles — Pretty self-explanatory, pretty awesome. Saved searches — The searches you save on Twitter.com are now synced with Tweetie. Landscape — The whole app now works in Landscape mode. Or you can disable that.
Video support — If you have an iPhone 3GS (Tweetie 2 requires iPhone 3.0 or above, but will work on older iPhones that that OS) you can also easily upload videos to Twitter via services such as yFrog. Get It…Soon So those are a lot of the big changes, but there are many more subtle ones as well. The main takeaway is that if you’re addicted to Tweetie 1, there isn’t anything in Tweetie 2 that you won’t like, and several things that are greatly improved. It’s simply a must-download. So when will it be available? Brichter plans to submit to the App Store at some point this week, so you can look for it sometime in the next couple of weeks depending on the approval process. The app will be $2.99, just like the first version was. Sadly, this will not be a free upgrade for existing Tweetie for iPhone users, as Britcher considers this to be (and has made it) a completely new app. Still, it’s easily worth the price. One more thing Brichter has also revealed that he is working on Tweetie 2 for Mac, and that it should be available shortly. He doesn’t give away too many details, but there are features such as syncing between the iPhone and Mac version. That will be a free upgrade if you already have a license for Tweetie for the Mac.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Google Docs Become More Student-Friendly Posted: 28 Sep 2009 01:08 PM PDT  Google has been aggressively marketing Google Apps to schools, recently launching a centralized site designed to recruit universities and colleges. Now, Google is tweaking Google Docs, which is a part of Google Apps’ productivity suite, by adding a few student-friendly features. Google Docs has added an equation editor so students can actually complete math problems within a document, allowing students to not only write papers that include numbers and equations but also take notes from quantitative classes using Google Docs. Google has also added the ability to insert superscripts and subscripts, which can be useful for writing out chemical compounds or algebraic expressions. Google is also trying to make Docs appealing to those humanities majors out there by letting users to select from various bulleting styles for creating outlines and giving students ability to print footnotes as endnotes for term papers. And a few weeks ago, Google launched a translation feature in Google Docs. As we’ve written in the past, Google is wise to recruit educational institutions because that’s where many people get trained, start relying on, and form brand allegiances to productivity apps. Drawing from Apple’s strategy, Google knows that brand loyalty is definitely forged at these schools and is steadily developing its products to become more appealing to students. Rival Microsoft is also launching web-based versions of its Office products aimed at the student audience. And startup Zohooffers a free web-based productivity suite. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Twitter Continues Talent Scoop, Takes Digg’s UX Guy Posted: 28 Sep 2009 12:22 PM PDT
Trammell is the latest in a series of long-time employees to leave Digg in recent months. In May, former lead architect Joe Stump announced he was leaving to do a new mobile location startup (now called SimpleGeo) with former SocialThing founder Matt Galligan. A couple of weeks ago, Digg’s design lead Daniel Burka, announced he would be joined Tiny Speck, the new social gaming startup led by former Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield. Despite the loses, Digg still has no real peer in terms of size in the social news space. Founder Kevin Rose recently spoke with Sarah Lacy backstage at TechCrunch50 about what is going right with Digg and some plans for the future. Notably, Sarah asked about if upcoming changes will make Digg more of a Twitter competitor, to which Rose replied that he didn’t think so. Instead, he wants to leverage Twitter to spread Digg’s stories more, and to bring Twitter users into the Digg experience. Trammell, it seems, should be able to help ease that transition if Twitter feels the same way. Trammell sounds particularly enthusiastic about his new gig:
Trammell notes that despite his new job, he will continue to advise Digg on user research. Meanwhile, Twitter is rapidly approaching 100 employees. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Tweetimag.es: An End To Broken Twitter Avatars Posted: 28 Sep 2009 11:29 AM PDT
Called Tweetimag.es, basically the service allows developers to replace their calls to Amazon’s S3-hosted Twitter images and instead use a shorter img.tweetimag.es URL that will always pull your most recent Twitter avatar. So something like this: http://a1.twimg.com/profile_images/396076570/Screen_shot_2009-09-03_at_2.04.12_AM.png Can be replaced by this: http://img.tweetimag.es/i/parislemon_o As you can plainly see, the tweetimag.es URL is much preferred. And you can easily get different sized thumbnails simply by replacing the “_o” with “_m” for a 24×24 pixel avatar, “_n” for a 48×48 one, “_b” for a 73×73 one. Stump envisions that developers may want to use Twitter usernames in a way similar to how email address are used for Gravatar images. With his solution, this will be possible. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| Newegg’s IPO Filing Reveals The Financials Behind A $2 Billion Electronics Retailer Posted: 28 Sep 2009 11:17 AM PDT Electronics retailer Newegg plans to raise $175 million for an IPO, according to an SEC filing. The online retailer sells IT products, including computer hardware and software; and consumer electronics through its website. In the filing, the retailer says that it has been profitable every year since 2001 and posted sales of $2.1 billion in 2008. Newegg’s net income increased 55 percent in 2008, to $28.4 million. Sales increased 13 percent to $2.1 billion in 2008, and have just more than doubled since 2004, when sales were $982 million. As a retailer, NewEgg’s’s profit margins are slim. It was only 1.4% in 2008. Amazon’s profit margins are around 3.3%, which is double Newegg’s margins. Reaching a 3.3% margin may the best Newegg can hope for. And while Newegg is seeing decent revenue growth, retail is tough, especially when your biggest competition is Amazon. In the filing, the retailer admits that it is playing in a tough field that’s chock full of other players. Newegg says that there are “intense competitive efforts” directed at them from rivals that have greater financial resources (i.e. Amazon), giving investors no assurance that Newegg will be able to compete against the big guys. As with any IPO, investors will be looking for growth potential and whether Newegg can expand those profit margins over time. In order to double its profits, it can either double its revenues to $4 billion or double its profit margins to match Amazon’s. Which one is more likely to happen first if at all? Would you invest in Newegg? Click on the financials below to enlarge. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| YouTube Tries To Win Over Media Partners With More Data Posted: 28 Sep 2009 10:01 AM PDT YouTube is trying to create more incentives for media partners to keep content on the video-hosting site. Today, YouTube announced the integration of Content ID, which is an advanced set of copyright policies and content management tools, with YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload. One way to look at this is that YouTube is trying to offer this extra data and analytics to keep partners on board. According to YouTube, over 1,000 partners are using Content ID to reveal user-uploaded versions of their videos on YouTube. The partners can then determine whether they to want block, track or make money from them. YouTube Insight shows stats, video rankings, demographics, discovery sources and other metrics for videos, giving partners a broader picture of how viral the content is. For example, YouTube says Sony Music learned that the JK Wedding Entrance Dance video is the music label’s 8th most popular video on YouTube via the Content ID and YouTube mashup. While the integration may not seem like a huge deal, the underlying reasons why YouTube is offering this package to media partners is significant. YouTube is trying to show media partners the benefits of keeping related content on YouTube by showering them with data. With YouTube Insight, it is showing them detailed analytics of how vast a video’s reach actually is (or isn’t). It’s unclear if media partners, such as Sony, will buy into this, but if YouTube can prove the benefits of the Content ID program in new ways, it should continue to grow and help YouTube turn a liability (copyright infringing videos) into an asset. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
| MySpace Floods Twitter With Status Updates; Now No. 2 Source of Short Links. Posted: 28 Sep 2009 09:06 AM PDT
Never underestimate the power of two-way sync and large social networks. A week ago, MySpace turned on two-way sync with Twitter, allowing members to post their status updates to Twitter directly from MySpace. Those updates appear in Twitter with a short link back to MySpace, using MySpace’s own link shortener, “http://lnk.ms/.” MySpace status updates are now flooding Twitter. Those MySpace short links account for 17 percent of all passed links on Twitter, according to Tweetmeme, making it the No. 2 link shortener after bit.ly, which rules with 68 percent. The day of the launch, lnk.ms accounted for 8.56 percent of all passed links on Twitter. MySpace has had its own short URL for about six months, but it’s only now taking off with two-way sync. The MySpace short links can be used for any URL, but it is the status updates which seem to be what they are being used for the most. So that’s not really a huge threat to bit.ly, even if it does represent a large and growing volume of short links on Twitter. Not everyone can see those status updates once they click through. You typically have to be that person’s friend on MySpace to even see the update. But the proliferation of lnk.ms links does show how easy it is for a large service like MySpace to inject itself into the conversation on Twitter with a simple feature like two-way sync.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco   |
YouTube has just held a conference call to announce that it has negotiated a deal with Warner Music Group, the major record label that pulled off the world’s most popular video portal after feeling shortchanged by the revenue its videos were driving. Many details of the deal have been 
When 
This is the third installment of our exclusive interview last week with Microsoft CEO 
This is a guest post written by a London-based VC. For the purposes of them being able to speak plainly without jeopardizing their fund or their career, I’ve allowed them to post anonymously. Why are we doing this? Well, while the startup eco-system is long in the tooth and highly developed in the US, the European scene is still a spotty, shy teenager, sometimes making a few mistakes. And as a result startups need educating. Make no mistake, 
There is absolutely no shortage of Twitter apps available for the iPhone. But in my mind (and the minds of many others) one stands above all the rest: 
Live-filtering search — At the top of your tweet stream is a Search Timeline option from which you can search your stream. The best part about this is that it filters as you type. Very sexy. You can also search your mentions this way.
More threaded conversations — One of the really nice UI elements of Tweetie for Mac is that is allows you to easily see a threaded conversation view between people. You can now do this on Tweetie 2 as well simply by clicking on who a tweet is in reply to.
Fresh off their new 
With more and more developers building services on top of Twitter, more and more are also using Twitter’s avatars as the primary icons for their services. That’s great because for the user it means one less image to upload to yet another service. The problem with this is that if a user changes that avatar on Twitter, it could break it on the new service without you realizing it. So former Digg lead architect and current 
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