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- The UN Taps Ustream, Skype, And Facebook To Help Stand Up Take Action!
- Venture Funds Raise Only $1.6 Billion In Third Quarter. Most Of That Went To Vinod Khosla.
- Gilt, eBay And Amazon Circle Vente Privee With Chatter Of $1.5 Billion On The Table
- Genentech’s (And Apple Board Member) Arthur Levinson Leaves Google Board
- Deezer Raises $9.5 Million More For Free Music Search And Streaming Service
- Information That Can Save Lives, Your Own Included. There’s An App For That.
- Google Wave And The Dawn Of Passive-Aggressive Communication
- Relevance Over Time
- Finding Your Co-Founders
- Review: Best New iPod and iPhone AppStore Games
- The Underutilized Power Of The Video Demo To Explain What The Hell You Actually Do
- Searchtastic Throws Its Hat Into The Twitter Search Engine Ring
| The UN Taps Ustream, Skype, And Facebook To Help Stand Up Take Action! Posted: 12 Oct 2009 09:00 AM PDT  Each Skype call will take place this week in the buildup to the Stand Up events that will take place around the world this weekend as citizens urge their governments to strive to reach the Millennium Development Goals. The Millennium campaign looks to help the world reach the eight Millennium Development Goals developed by the United Nations in 2000, with the target of having each of them fulfilled by 2015. The goals focus on ending poverty and the root causes behind it, as well as furthering education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving health care and more (you can see the full list here).  Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors           |
| Venture Funds Raise Only $1.6 Billion In Third Quarter. Most Of That Went To Vinod Khosla. Posted: 12 Oct 2009 08:49 AM PDT More evidence that venture exits and fund raising are related. We already know that venture exits were anemic in the third quarter of 2009, and now the National Venture Capital Association has released data on how much money venture funds themselves were able to raise. It was not a lot in historical terms. According to the NCVA’s data, venture funds raised $1.6 billion in the third quarter, down 82 percent from a year ago and down 21 percent from last quarter. What’s more is that about $1 billion of that was accounted for by one VC firm, Khosla Ventures. Although, the NCVA only notes Khosla’s bigger $750 million fund, so it is not clear if it is including its smaller seed fund as well in these figures. The largest new fund in the quarter was Andreessen Horowitz, which is a $300 million fund. But again, the NVCA association only counts $58.5 million. Perhaps that is how much cash they took in and the rest is commitments. But since it is willing to spend up to $50 million per investment, and is participating in the huge round Skype raised, maybe it’s time to call their LPs again. Or maybe, the NVCA’s data is incomplete. Either way, it is astounding that one or two funds can account for nearly all the venture money raised in a quarter. But perhaps that is function of the fact that not many funds actually raised money. Only 17 funds raised cash in the quarter, compared to 63 a year ago.
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| Gilt, eBay And Amazon Circle Vente Privee With Chatter Of $1.5 Billion On The Table Posted: 12 Oct 2009 07:59 AM PDT
Probably the reason it prompted such sideways looks, however, is that this is not a classic ‘web app’ startup, but an e-commerce hub. Vente Privee began in France in 2001, but has only recently become a powerhouse of the new wave in Europe: an online private sales club involving designer fashion brands, otherwise known in the fashion retail industry as the “overstock market”. Its success has lead to a bunch of clone sites, while Vente Privee itself is on target to hit €650m in turnonver globally this year. In other words Europe is not out to lunch – as Arrington put it – it is out to shop. But Vente Privee’s success has now lead to a number of U.S. companies becoming very interested in either entering this world or expanding their operations. TechCrunch Europe thus understands, from some very well placed sources, that Gilt, Amazon and eBay are all actively looking at acquisitions in the European private shopping club space. The price for Vente Privee alone is being talked about in terms of a $1.5 billion sale. Some sources even put the figure at between $2 billion and $4 billion. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.   |
| Genentech’s (And Apple Board Member) Arthur Levinson Leaves Google Board Posted: 12 Oct 2009 06:42 AM PDT
No reason for the departure was given in the statement, but it’s safe to assume that it has something to do with the growing tension between Google and Apple, which is still being investigated by the FTC. In the statement, Schmidt describes Levinson as a good friend and valued colleague:
Earlier this month, Eric Schmidt at a conference said Levinson should stay on the boards of both Google and Apple despite regulatory scrutiny. He stated he saw no reason for any changes to that because an antitrust test for overlapping board members of Apple and Google relating to revenue overlap would be easily passed. Despite his remarks, it’s perfectly conceivable that there was simply too much outside and internal pressure for Levinson to continue to sit on both boards. Now that Levinson is departing the Google board after all, there are no longer any ties between both companies on a director level, although former Vice President Al Gore continues to reside on Apple's board while also serving as a senior advisor to Google. For now. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   |
| Deezer Raises $9.5 Million More For Free Music Search And Streaming Service Posted: 12 Oct 2009 04:11 AM PDT  Music search and discovery engine Deezer has raised €6.5 million ($9.6 million) in a second round of financing, bringing the total amount invested in the French upstart to approx. €12.2 million ($18 million). The additional capital was raised from from AGF Private Equity and CM-CIC Capital Privé, thus joining the historical shareholders who make up the DOTCORP Asset Management funds. Deezer is one of the most popular music services in Europe. Formerly known as BlogMusik, it ran into lots of legal trouble when it launched its free music streaming service a couple of years ago. However, unlike many other ventures of the kind the startup turned itself around, reached essential agreements with copyright associations, and ultimately relaunched as a 'legitimately' free music search engine back in August 2007.   |
| Information That Can Save Lives, Your Own Included. There’s An App For That. Posted: 12 Oct 2009 03:01 AM PDT
Meet iMobile Care, a potential life-saver that you can carry around in your pocket. Launched at the beginning of this month, the app is primarily a reference guide that lets you obtain essential information about medical conditions and situations quickly and easily. The tool allows users to get a visual and textual explanation of how deliver aid and care during emergencies and events such as accidents, bites and stings, choking, injuries, poisoning, burns, and many other critical situations. But billed as a mere mobile first aid guide even by its own makers, it’s actually much more than that. And I’m not saying that because you can make fart noises with it (you can’t), but because iMobile Care also boasts a number of location and personalization features that could well make the difference between life or death for yourself in the situations described above. I purchased and installed the iPhone app, which allows me to have the app automatically pinpoint my location if I choose to configure it that way. In addition, I can provide additional, optional data like my blood type, address, primary contact in case of emergency, any medication I use, allergies I have, and more. As you can see in the screenshot above, the app lets you call your local emergency number – which it automatically fetches as soon as you set your country – and access your camera or photo library in just one click. This can prove very useful e.g. in case of a car accident where you can provide much more information about the situation with one image than with a thousand words (and much faster too). You can also sound an SOS alert from your phone in case of distress, and provide additional information for when you switch it on, all of which you can store in advance to make sure you don’t lose time explaining your situation (provided you’re even capable to do so at that point). Here’s an example of how that might work: VisionSync, the company behind the app, is careful enough to clearly state it doesn’t substitute for care that well-trained first aid personnel can deliver and that it works best for users who have gone through the various conditions and situations located on the iMobile Care app prior to them actually occurring. We should probably also point out that the company’s privacy policy shows that they cannot guarantee the absolute privacy of the data you provide, which can include confidential information like medical history, conditions, medications, and location. I purchased the app and I’m willing to take that risk because I think the advantages outweigh the potential disadvantages, but you may feel different about that. iMobile Care is available for the iPhone ($2.99 – iTunes link) and smartphones running Android. Support for Blackberry devices and Windows Mobile-equipped phones will be added in the near future. Cheesy video with more screenshots: Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   |
| Google Wave And The Dawn Of Passive-Aggressive Communication Posted: 12 Oct 2009 01:59 AM PDT
The Wall Street Journal has a long article about this today, noting “The End of the Email Era.” But most of that article is spent focusing on how Twitter and Facebook, which is to say, status updates and the streams, are replacing our need for much of what email has provided in the past. Only very briefly do they mention Wave. And I think that overlooks something. For many of us, email is simply not cutting it the way that it used to. It’s a sedentary beast in a fast-moving web. It uses old principles for management, and this is leading to overload. I think the key statement in the WSJ is this:
That’s absolutely true. But that also implies that we want some sort of always-on communication connection. I don’t think that’s the case. I think we want the option to communicate in real-time at will, but also the ability to communicate at our leisure at times. I would consider this to be a desire for a “passive-agressive” method of communication. Perhaps it would be better stated as a “passive/active” method of communication, but passive-aggressive sounds better, so we’ll go with that. I would consider email to be a passive form of communication. I don’t mean that you don’t respond to it, I mean that you don’t have to respond to it right away. Instant messaging is at the other end of the spectrum. If used correctly, it’s supposed to be an “aggressive” or “active” form of communication in which you respond immediately. Twitter is very passive because the use of it is such that people don’t even necessarily expect a response of any kind, even if they point a message at you. Facebook is a mixture of all of those things (more on that below). Google Wave is attempting to be a passive-agressive form of communication. You can actively (aggressively) engage in threads in real-time, or you can sit back and let messages come to you at your leisure (passively). Having used the product for a few months now, and after using it quite a bit more actively with my friends these past few days, I really think that Wave is onto something with this method of communication. I would argue that Google Wave’s new message alert system needs to be somewhat reworked or re-imagined, but I do think the desire to blend passive and agressive methods of communicating is there.
And while there is the option to reply to emails by chat if that person is online, there’s no real integration between the email message and the IM message, they exist as two totally separate things. It seems like we’re at the point now where that shouldn’t have be the case. Others, like Yahoo Mail, are now trying to tack-on status updates and the stream to email services too. The result is a Frankenstein-like service. Facebook is another interesting example in that, as I mentioned, it combines all of these elements: Email, IM, status updates, and a stream. But the connection between all of these things in that system is loose at best. From a unified communications standpoint, Facebook is really kind of a mess. There are whispers of changes, and I hope that’s true, but I’m not holding my breath for a service with 300 million users to do something new and drastic that will alienate a certain (probably large) percentage of its base. That’s why Wave is interesting. It’s backed by a huge company, Google, but it’s not trying to shove this upon all of its Gmail users. Instead, they’re going to slowly roll this out and see how users end up using it. And maybe more importantly, they want to see how developers start using it. And that’s really a key that a lot of early users are overlooking. Right now, when people hear “Google Wave,” everyone seems to want to place emphasis on the “Google” part of it. But the truth is that the grand goal of the team behind the project is to emphasize “Wave” as both a platform and a new communication standard. Whether Google Wave succeeds is really irrelevant. More important is if the idea of Wave does. Again, the idea of passive-aggressive communication. Wave, the Google web-based client, will only ever appeal to a certain number of users. Does anyone really think that Twitter would be where it is today if they only had twitter.com? No. Wave desktop apps, and mobile apps, internal company Waves, and public Waves; it’s the platform, not the product, that’s interesting. Or, more to the point, it’s the key communication idea behind it. [photo: flickr/matheus sanchez] Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   |
| Posted: 12 Oct 2009 12:09 AM PDT
A chronological system for indexing information breaks down quickly once the amount of information received reaches a certain critical point. Active users of email constantly moan about the information overload they experience, and the information is only a load because it is difficult to sort through and manage in modern systems. According to the cognitive theory of choice complexity, that feeling of load multiplies with each incremental increase in choices and decisions having to be made. In the email world this leads to a complete breakdown, and the trend of email bankruptcy (deleting all email and starting again). Chronological order became more common on the web as social networks, such as the Facebook, blogs, feeds, feed readers, FriendFeed and services such as Twitter designed around the same paradigm – leading to most recent being most important. Some call it real-time, others call it information overload. A default view of chronological order presents a natural barrier to the number of information sources that can be managed effectively (Scoble somehow broke the barrier, he is an exception). With only a few dozen feeds, a hundred or so emails a day and following one hundred or so people on Twitter, I find myself constantly behind and not being able to manage. When I am reading these sources, I find myself simply scanning for what is most relevant and most important – for eg. I will quickly reply to an email from a co-worker, while leaving others to slowly creep into the abyss of my archive. Chronological order needs to be abandoned in favor of relevance. Without relevance, our ability to manage large sets of information is inefficient. The technology for relevance exist today, for eg. spam filters are able to tell us what we definitely don’t want to read. Real world information retrieval and organization is based on relevance, either what somebody else believes is relevant to us, or what we decide is relevant. Newspaper stories are not laid out in the order that events took place and libraries do not catalog their books in the order they were published. Web applications that present relevance over chronological have proven to be popular. Techmeme hacked RSS, and instead of reading 50 feeds I can have Techmeme read 20,000 for me. Community-powered sites such as HackerNews are similar, they float up the latest content based on what a like-minded community finds interesting. The TiVo hacked television by taking chronological out of the picture and applying relevance. Email applications have attempted to hack what is essentially relevance into the traditional chronological order. Old desktop email clients introduced folders and filters. Gmail introduced labels, adding a star to a thread and grouping multiple emails into a thread. Yahoo Mail attempts to highlight emails that it believes are from people close or important to you. I hand over a lot of information to the applications that I use every day, but I am getting nothing in return (other than ads that creep me out). Every time I click a ‘like’, or I re-tweet, or I bookmark a page, or I spend time reading a post, that information can be stored somewhere and used to figure out what information is most important to me. I would happily exchange that part of my privacy for the ability to save a few hours each day and the pain of having to personally sort through all this information. The ingredients for a personalized aggregator of all information exist today. A working solution would allow me to funnel far more data into my stream, and to not only discover more, but become more efficient. The second by second and minute by minute chronological order paradigm is broken, and like QWERTY, is a legacy from a world where systems were not smart enough to determine relevancy and real networks did not exist. Original backwards post here Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.   |
| Posted: 11 Oct 2009 09:31 PM PDT
The number one question you all asked after reading my last blog post about starting a business from scratch was “how do I find my co-founders?” Great question – let’s start with a bit of self reflection: Close your eyes and visualize your group of closest friends. Now, think specifically about how tall (or short) they all are. Great, now ask yourself “are all of them roughly the same height?” I’ll bet most of them are – you included. And therein lies the problem in finding co-founders for that startup you’re dying to launch. It’s most comfortable to hang out with people like ourselves, but those are exactly the folks you probably don’t want to co-found a startup with. Seems a bit unintuitive, right? I'll explain. The best founding team for a startup is a group of two or three people who have synergistic – not overlapping – skills. Note that it’s also important your goals and passions be similar. If one of you wants to sell fast and the other wants to build a billion dollar business, that’ll make for pretty serious friction down the road. So too would a team where one person’s more interested in enterprise startups while the other person’s passion lies in consumer experiences. With that out of the way, however, it’s critical that you look for people with complementary skills to your own. In consumer internet, that usually means one front-end user-facing developer, one back-end server-side developer, and ultimately a business person (details will come in a later post). The reality though, is that we tend to hang out with people who are just like us. Remember that story I told about the three business school students telling me about their tech startup, leaving me to wonder who’d actually build the product? I see that all too frequently – from business folks and techies alike. It’s just easier to hang out with people in your same classes at school, or your same group at work. If you happen to be in school now, you’re in the most fertile place possible to meet your co-founders. Take advantage of it! How’d I meet Elaine and Sandy? Mutual friends from school. How about some other teams? Larry and Sergey from Google met at Stanford. So did Jerry and David from Yahoo!. The Plaxo founders also met in school, which is also where Mark from Facebook met his co-founders. Having trouble meeting folks you think would be good co-founders? Here are a couple ideas: 1. Join student groups relevant to your interests. If you’re a business major – go check out the Engineering Society’s monthly meeting. If you’re in the CS department, I’ll bet the business school students would kill to meet you at the next Entrepreneurship Club meeting. 2. If your school doesn’t already have a student group designed to foster collaboration between groups of students with the skills necessary to get a startup rolling, start one! BASES at Stanford is a great model to follow. It brings together students from both the undergraduate and graduate levels, across disciplines such as design, computer science and business. Ok, so most folks reading this are probably out of school. Fortunately, there are a number of examples of successful founding teams that met outside of school. Chad and Steve from YouTube met while working at PayPal. Sean and Shawn from Napster met in an IRC channel. Cisco was a husband and wife team. It helps to be in school, but it’s not an absolute requirement. A few practical ideas applicable to everyone, in school or not: 1. Get out there and find activities that attract diverse groups of people. In Silicon Valley, rock climbing’s a current hot spot for startup folks. So is ultimate frisbee. There’s at least one weekly ultimate frisbee game I’m aware of that’s chock-full of people from the startup industry, on both the business and tech sides. 2. Ask your friends for intros to people in an area you’re trying to learn about. Chances are someone in your group of techies knows someone business oriented. The first folks you meet may not be a fit, but keep asking for referrals and you’ll get there. 3. Join / attend local organizations designed to foster introductions between folks interested in startups. SVASE or Founder Dating in Silicon Valley, First Tuesday in London and Hackers and Founders in New York all come to mind. 4. Team with co-workers at your current job or that internship you did last summer. Just make sure to not violate any non-competes, etc, in the process! Generally speaking, as long as you're not working on a project your employer would reasonably want to own, you're probably ok. Of course, do not use any of your employer's resources. A great friend of mine is scheming, right now, with a co-worker on their next great startup. One’s a PM and the other’s an engineer. I’m sure some of you are thinking “that’s all great – but I live in the middle of nowhere and none of those resources are available to me.” To be blunt, find a way to move to Silicon Valley. Other cities like New York, Boston, Seattle, LA and Austin TX also have pretty strong startup communities. However, nowhere has as many real estate agents, lawyers, accountants, landlords, employees, co-founders, mentors, and VCs all steeped in startup culture as does Silicon Valley. The ecosystem is just hard to beat. The result is that you'll be exposed to many more people who can help you get started. In my case, I grew up in Connecticut and spent a fair amount of time in New York – all the while trying to start companies, relatively unsuccessfully. Friends in Silicon Valley kept telling me to move out there for all the reasons I mentioned above. I finally found my ticket in the form of admission to business school in the valley. Find your ticket. The hardest part of starting from scratch is finding the right co-founders. Ideas, comparatively, are easy. You may spend three years finding your co-founders while you'll come up with a solid idea every 3 months or so. Luckily, once you settle into a great founding team you’ll be able to execute much faster on that killer idea you all come up with – beating those ten other folks who came up with the same idea at the same time. Remember, the ultimate goal is to create a founding team that can, within its own skill set, get a working prototype out the door. This means you need to find folks with skills that compensate for your weaknesses. Co-founding a startup is like getting into a marriage – picking the right people is critical. In later posts I’ll get more specific on how to figure out if the folks you’re meeting are the right people to work with, and also how to deal with issues like splitting equity and paying yourselves before raising funding. Feel free to follow me on Twitter to get notifications of later posts on this topic, both here and on the Meebo Blog. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.   |
| Review: Best New iPod and iPhone AppStore Games Posted: 11 Oct 2009 05:29 PM PDT With the recent iPod Touch update Apple has positioned and marketed the device as a new type of mobile gaming platform. Games have always been some of the best selling applications in the AppStore for both the iPod Touch and the iPhone. A recent advertisement for the iPod Touch carries the slogan “The Funnest iPod Ever” and features a number of games. We decided to try out and review each of the games featured in the ad and rate the ‘fun factor’ ourselves. The Apple mobile devices have become decent gaming machines, with some of the newer games providing in-depth 3D environments and absorbing gameplay. We found a number of games that were extremely well developed and addictive, as good and better than most of the dedicated mobile gaming devices available on the market today. We previously reviewed the best iPhone Apps so far this year. The following is our review of 12 of the new iPod Touch and iPhone games featured and highlighted in the recent Apple campaign. If you have found any cool and fun new games for the iPod Touch or iPhone, or you have a particular favorite game, let us know in the comments. We’ve also added an Appsfire widget with all the apps at the bottom of the post. Top GunTechCrunch Rating: Download: Rated 9+; $1.99
The game features 10 missions, each one increasing in difficulty as you progress. The controls are balanced and the game is well designed for the most part. The graphics were crisp, and there was no frame lag when I played. It did seem odd though that the game had no throttle control: you are unable to speed up nor slow down, which meant I couldn’t use my favorite Top Gun quote, “You’re gonna do what,?!” while playing. The lack of a multiplayer mode keeps me from giving it a higher ranking, but for two bucks, you can’t really go wrong. Playing to Danger Zone adds another star to the rating, it just pumps me up everytime. Real RacingTechCrunch Rating: Download: Rated 4+; $6.99
Overall, this game is amazing. The graphics are awesome, the gameplay is crisp, and you can even post your best races straight to youtube! The only thing that seems to be missing is a non-local multiplayer so that you can challenge anyone around the world, but the upsides far outweigh this point. Definitely worth the $6.99. F.A.S.TTechCrunch Rating:
With multiplayer mode you are able to fight one-on-one with a friend over WiFi or bluetooth. With WiFi, you can indulge in more advance multiplayer modes that allow you to team up with a friend against another team, or go all-out in a free for all mode. The controls are much more advanced than in Top Gun, and as a simulator it is much more accurate (blackout from high G-forces, etc.). The overall response rate is excellent. The 99c price makes it cheap, and there are plenty of extras to be purchased within the game such as extra planes (13 available in total). A classic game and a favorite of ours. Monster Trucks NitroTechCrunch Rating: Download: Rated 4+; $0.99
Unfortunately, I finished quite quickly and realized that there was no replay value to it other than simply going for all Gold medals. Also, there was no real sense of speed even when I used the Nitro. The graphics are decent, the framerate is adequate, and the multiple camera angles add a neat aspect to this game. However, the amount of content is definitely the shortcoming in this game and keeps it from a better rating. 3D Rollercoaster RushTechCrunch Rating: Download: Rated 4+; $4.99; Limited Free Version Being able to race the game designer’s time and demolish it is pretty satisfying, but I would still like a multiplayer function if I’m going to be shelling my hard earned(ish) cash. Overall, the $4.99 is a bit steep compared to other games, but worth it. At a slightly lower price, it would definitely be a 5-star ‘must have’ game. Try out the free version first to find out if you enjoy the game. Touch Hockey: FS5TechCrunch Rating: AppStore: Rated 4+; $0.99; Limited Free Version
The only problem is that in single-player mode the AI is way too easy, so unless you have a friend to play against over WiFi, the game becomes very boring very quickly. The only difference between the free version and paid version is the removal of ads, which for most won’t justify the purchase price as the ads are not very intrusive. Homerun Battle 3DTechCrunch Rating: AppStore: Rated 4+; $4.99
My only gripe is how, when playing alone, the computer can throw six 80 MPH fastballs in a row, and then come with a 104 MPH slider. That’s ridiculous. Other than that, this game is a must have for anyone looking for a casual and fun game. Tiger Woods PGA Tour by EA SportsTechCrunch Rating: AppStore: Rated 4+; $4.99
The game offers actual PGA courses to play on, different difficulty levels, and upgradeable equipment and abilities. The graphics are as good as they get, the gameplay is on par with any other game out there, and replay value is high, especially for fans of golf. An online multiplayer would have seen this game receive an off-the-charts rating, and I hope we see that feature soon. This game is definitely a must have for anyone with either an iPhone or an iPod Touch. Slope RiderTechCrunch Rating: AppStore: Rated 4+; $2.99; Limited Free Version
There is no multiplayer, and the only way to gauge how good you are is to check the global leaderboard. For this game, I would definitely recommend saving your three dollars for one of the other games on this list, and just downloading the free version. Aqua Moto RacingTechCrunch Rating: AppStore: Rated 4+; $3.99; Limited Free Version
While this game doesn’t have true multiplayer functionality, it does offer ghost mode. Ghost mode lets you race against the times of those who have made the global leaderboard. While this game isn’t on par with some of the other stellar apps on this list, it is definitely worth the free test drive, especially for those nostalgic for the old Wave Race. Finger FoosTechCrunch Rating: AppStore: Rated 4+; FREE
It is a very very poor version of Touch Hockey: FS5, but does have the benefit of allowing more players to compete at once. It is a free game, so try it out yourselves to find out just how terrible it is and how misleading the ads can be. 2XL SupercrosTechCrunch Rating: AppStore: Rated 4+; $7.99; Limited Free Version
The controls take a little while to get used to, but once you get them, the game is a lot of fun. And if you don’t like the preset controls, no worries, as the game has eight different control configurations. This is another must have for any game enthusiast. Best of all, it has a free version to test-drive. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| The Underutilized Power Of The Video Demo To Explain What The Hell You Actually Do Posted: 11 Oct 2009 04:58 PM PDT
Here’s a sad truth: a lot of reporters really are quite lazy. Not in the sense that they don’t want to find and cover a cool new company (in which case they should consider a new career path), but in that they don’t like to spend time wading through marketing material trying to figure out what your company actually does. After all, we’ve got inboxes stuffed with pitches from companies vying for coverage. If it takes more than a minute or two to figure out what problem you’re trying to solve, we’re probably more likely to simply skip to the next message than to try to make sense of your feature set. Consumers are even lazier. If you don’t have some kind of bite-sized hook that introduces them to your product, there’s a good chance they’ll stare quizzically at the screen, shrug their shoulders, and head back to Google to find something else that fixes their problem. Walls of descriptive text definitely are not the answer. Images can help, but they can also become overwhelming. Video, especially in an age when people are so used to consuming it online, is often a good solution. But just making a video isn’t enough – you need to make sure that the video actually conveys what the hell you actually do. This is apparently much harder than it sounds, because I’ve seen plenty of video demos loaded with screenshots, walkthroughs, and pretty graphics but still leave me scratching my head. The truth is, you don’t need a single screenshot to make an effective video. You just need to show how people will actually use what you’ve built, not a sales pitch. Take Dropbox for example. I use the service every day and love it, but every time I try to describe it in a sentence I’m left with something that makes me retch a bit — “intuitive and deeply integrated file synchronization service” just doesn’t come close to capturing just how damn cool Dropbox really is. Apparently the Dropbox team didn’t have much luck describing themselves in text either, so they’ve gone another route: visit their homepage, and you’ll see a polished, easy-to-follow video demo front and center that perfectly describes what the service actually does. Dropbox has made one mistake though: they don’t offer a way to embed their great demo video anywhere else (someone else did upload it to YouTube though, so I’ve embedded it below). Some bloggers, including myself, are more than happy to embed a video walkthrough in posts, provided it isn’t overly self promotional. There are plenty of other examples of companies using video demos to great effect. Head over to Apple’s iPhone site and you’ll notice that they offer video walkthroughs for basically everything the phone can do. Google now regularly uses video walkthroughs to introduce many of their new products and features, though they don’t always do a great job — this video demo created by a third party did a better job explaining Wave than anything Google has made. Of course, a video demo isn’t absolutely essential to your site’s success. Just look at Mint, which was just acquired for $170 million by Intuit. There’s nary a video in sight, and — at the risking of sounding like a complete fool given its huge acquisition price — I find Mint’s 20+ pages outlining its feature set and why people should use the service to be positively daunting. Twitter’s page doesn’t include a video (though I think it badly needs one). And Facebook just says that it’s a service that “helps you connect and share with the people in your life”, which would set my bullshit meter off the charts if it appeared in any startup pitch. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   |
| Searchtastic Throws Its Hat Into The Twitter Search Engine Ring Posted: 11 Oct 2009 10:48 AM PDT  There are a plethora of startups that are trying to harness and improve upon Twitter’s real-time search functionality, including Collecta, One Riot, Scoopler and TwitterTroll. The simple fact is that there is considerable value for users in searching Tweets, and even the big guns like Microsoft and Google are beginning to wake up to this. Today, Searchtastic, which bills itself as “smart Twitter search,” is launching its own Twitter search engine. Like other Twitter search sites, Searchtastic lets you search Tweets for a particular keyword or hashtag. What makes the search engine interesting is the ability to pull up Tweets from weeks or months ago, which Twitter’s own search engine doesn’t allow you to do. Twitter’s search currently lets you see Tweets from a week and a half back (which varies). The other main feature of Searchtastic is the ability to search Tweets from a particular user. And the interface lets you add and delete search terms fairly easily. And speaking of the interface, Searchtastic definitely leaves little to be desired. But the startup says that it will be adding new features and improvements in the next few weeks, so hopefully that will include a redesign. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.   |
On stage at last year’s 
This is one mobile application I think everyone should have installed. And be recommended by them to all of their friends and relatives to boot.
We’re now a little over a week into the 
We’ve been slowly building up to a system like this. Gmail has for a while offered users a nice blend of email and instant messaging on the same page. And while it is nice that there is also the option to archive all your chats for searching purposes later, there is no good way to say, see that you missed an IM if you have a computer with Gmail open at home while you’re away and checking it remotely. You also can’t check these easily via IMAP on your phone, and the like.
When email was first created in 1965 it was used as a method to communicate between time-shared mainframe computers. Email has rapidly evolved since then, with the evolution of rich desktop clients, corporate email systems and webmail. Despite the evolution in the core messaging system, and despite the explosion in use of email, the default method for accessing and viewing communications has 
This is the second in a series of posts by by 
After watching Top Gun for the first time, who didn’t want to be a Navy Fighter Pilot – flying around shooting planes out of the sky to save your country, and being called awesome monikers like Maverick and Ice Man? With 
This is the closest an iPhone game has come to either 
The goal of Monster Trucks Nitro is to race down the eight different tracks as fast as you can while surmounting the obstacles which the game lays out. The game awards either a Bronze, Silver, or Gold medal depending on how fast you complete the races. Monster Trucks Nitro is a fun game and kept me engaged for a short while. 
Looking at the description of this game, I didn’t think there was any way this game could be worth the $4.99 price tag, so I downloaded and installed the free and restriction version to try it out. Within minutes of playing the free version, I was hooked, and immediately purchased the full version for $4.99. The graphics are awesome, and I have yet to get past all of the levels. The carts can go faster or slower through the use of the accelerometer and the stunts which you can perform are, as the description describes, “insane.” 
Playing this game brings back memories of being in an arcade and playing air hockey with my buddies. There really isn’t too much to say about Touch Hockey: FS5, as it is quite simple and intuitive. The gameplay is smooth and very responsive. The friends feature, where you can play a friend over WiFi, is very addictive. 
Homerun Battle 3D, previously known as Baseball Slugger, is a homerun. The batting controls are perfect and there is so much replay value with the online challenges. The graphics are clear and the stadium rendering excellent – it certainly looks and plays better than Wii Baseball. This has quickly become one of my favorite iPhone/iPod Touch games available today.
Like Tiger Woods, this game is a winner. It becomes apparently from early on that 
Based on the Mac game, Slope Rider was re-engineered to work on the iPhone/iPod Touch. While the game has crisp graphics and a good interface, there is nothing which truly stands out. You can either race via the alpine tracks, or do tricks via the freestyle courses. There are a multitude of tricks to master which are combined through the use of grabs, flips, and turns, which will in turn increase your points. 
If you blinked during the Apple commercial then you might not have seen this game. Aqua Moto Racing brings back memories of Nintendo 64’s Wave Race, which is definitely a good thing. There are 18 different tracks to race from, and you are able to race these in reversed mode as well, which adds to the replayability of the game. 
On the Apple Ad, Finger Foos seems really cool and fun, but it really isn’t – it is terrible. The game is ridiculously simple and requires absolutely no skill whatsoever. The technology behind it is slick as you can see in the commercial, but the game just isn’t very fun. 
If a game developer charges $8 for a game, it better be a very good one, especially since that price point is at the top end for games and it is the most expensive game on this list. 
During my time at TechCrunch I’ve seen thousands of startups and written about hundreds of them. I sure as hell don’t know all the secrets to building a successful company, but there are a few things I’ve seen that seem like surefire ways to ever-so-slightly grease the road to success. Here’s an easy one: make a video demo and prominently promote it somewhere where new visitors can find it. One that shows off the core function of your product without making people think they’re watching an ad or a pitch. And answer, as thoroughly as possible in 2-3 minutes, what it is that you’re bringing to the table.| You are subscribed to email updates from TechCrunch To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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