The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Barnes & Noble eReader Leaks and It’s a Doozy
- Blogged.com Gets A Real-Time Makeover
- Fotolia Plugs Into Office 2007 Apps – Buy Stock Photos Straight From MS Word
- YouTube Integrates Promoted Videos With AdWords, Launches Them Abroad
- Q3 2009 TechCrunch Trends: Venture Funding Up 17.5%, M&A Rebounds Even More
- Applause For Finland: First Country To Make Broadband Access A Legal Right
- Theory: Danger’s Sidekick Data Explosion Was (DUDUNT! DUDUNT!) Sabotage?
- BigDoor Opens Doors To Public Beta Of Website And iPhone App Monetization Tool
- WhitePages Now Lets You Control Your Own Listings
- Skype Founders Take A Break From Starting Lawsuits To Start Music Company
- On Deadpool Watch: Joost Puts UK Subsidiary Into Liquidation
- GOOD Scores Funding, Strategic Partnerships To Help Improve The World
- Google Experiments With Product Ads In Search Results
- The New Technorati
- Technorati Raises Another $2 Million In Venture Capital
- MOG Over Promises And Under Delivers With New Music Service
- A First Glimpse Of Chrome OS In The Flesh
- Apple Moves To Block Jailbreaking In New iPhones
- Twitter…Er, Apple, Is Down
- Netvibes Allows Publishers To Push Updates At You, But You Can Shove Them Back
- Dropbox Acquires The Domain Everyone Thought It Had: Dropbox.com
- What 5% Drop? ComScore Says Bing Search Share Stayed Steady In September
- Goowy Team Bails Out Of AOL To Start Assistly
- Keepers Of The Court: Foursquare Superusers
- As Facebook Nears 100M U.S. Visitors, Twitter Falls Further Behind In The Rear-View Mirror
| Barnes & Noble eReader Leaks and It’s a Doozy Posted: 14 Oct 2009 09:08 AM PDT  Barnes & Noble is apparently trying to sell an ebook reader that will launch next week. Fair enough. The Kindle needs a strong competitor. However, these mock-ups from Giz show something that looks so wild as to be a bit too good to be true. What you're seeing is an 800x600 pixel paper screen with a small "multi-touch" LCD that would allow you to browse books in full color and tap out search terms and notes. It will have support for B&N titles sold in the store and online as well as the ability to download Google books.           | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Blogged.com Gets A Real-Time Makeover Posted: 14 Oct 2009 08:55 AM PDT
Today, the startup is trying to add more real-time features to its site in order to make the user experience more rich. Blogged is adding a real-time commenting feature, which is similar in theory to JS-Kit’s Echo product, that lets you comment on blog posts in a real-time stream that is continually updated without having to refresh the page. In order to comment, you need to sign into the site with a user name or you can use Facebook Conenct. The site now lets you Retweet Blogged.com com stories. Any responses to the Tweet will be pulled back in to the Blogged comment stream. Blogged.com has also added a ‘Live Chat’ feature that lets users see which of their friends are online and create a single users or multiple user discussion room about a news event or article. And bloggers can bring discussion streams in the comments to their sites with an embeddable widget. Any comments made on Blogged.com will show up in real-time in the widget. Blogged’s real-time features are definitely innovative and engaging but the blog’s biggest challenge will be drawing users to its site. It faces competition from a number of popular news aggregators, including Techmeme, which is generally recognized as the definitive resource for breaking stories and trends across tech blogs (the site has similar offerings for politics, sports, and gossip). Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Fotolia Plugs Into Office 2007 Apps – Buy Stock Photos Straight From MS Word Posted: 14 Oct 2009 08:00 AM PDT
Once the ribbon is downloaded from the Fotolia website and installed, users can search stock photos for the projects that they’re working on straight from the top menu of their applications, so they don’t need to go away from their documents to obtain appropriate stock imagery. Before purchasing an item from the company’s library, which it says presently counts over 7-million royalty-free high-resolution files, users can hover over search results within the doc to see a preview of images. Double-click, and the item gets placed in the doc for you to see if it matches what you were trying to visualize. Users can then opt to buy images in any of the available sizes and licenses straight from Fotolia. Once the image is downloaded into the user's document, users are free to use the Fotolia file with no limit on time, copies or geographical placements. Fotolia has been supplying imagery to Microsoft Office Online customers for a few years now, but this really ties the knot. It’s a great idea, and I concur with Microsoft’s Office.com Group Manager Rob Ashby, who commented that the addition of Fotolia can be a significant productivity win for customers. I guess it also makes sense for the company to endorse this and similar add-ons because they’re bound to keep users inside its software applications as much as possible, but the benefits for users are clear too. It’s also yet another sign that the line between desktop and web software is blurring. Again, this product is quite brilliant, and I’m sure other stock photography players will be following suit soon. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| YouTube Integrates Promoted Videos With AdWords, Launches Them Abroad Posted: 14 Oct 2009 07:59 AM PDT
AdWords is Google’s bread-and-butter ad platform that plenty of brands and businesses already use to place their ads outside of YouTube, so this will help streamline the purchase process. It’s not all about convenience either — advertisers will also be able to use AdWords campaign tools, which are more robust than what YouTube offers. YouTube is also announcing that it’s extending Promoted Videos to Canada, France, the UK, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands. The news comes soon after a number of other significant improvements to the Promoted Videos program, which has seen a 500% increase in clicks since the beginning of the year. In August, YouTube began integrating ads for Promoted Video directly into the site’s ‘Watch’ page (before that they would appear in search results, but not where users actually viewed content). And earlier this month the site began allowing the sponsored videos to appear in AdSense units across the web, where they compete in standard ad auctions. All of this is part of YouTube’s push to monetize the site, and to make it more appealing to its growing list of premium content providers. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Q3 2009 TechCrunch Trends: Venture Funding Up 17.5%, M&A Rebounds Even More Posted: 14 Oct 2009 06:40 AM PDT Last quarter, based on funding and M&A data we collect in CrunchBase, we signaled that we were cautiously optimistic about the rebound of the tech sector. Q2 trends were no worse than Q1 09: venture financings were up 20% and mergers & acquisitions held steady (excluding Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems) in comparison to Q1. With another quarter of data under our belts, we're feeling even better about the health of technology startups. The number of new startups, venture fundings and M&A are all on the rise. In addition to decent stats, there are lots of new tech products launching across diverse categories, coming from companies both great and small. The Layoff Tracker and Deadpool have quieted down in our sector. In short, we're feeling like there's a more rational and focused market for startups and tech. Strategic M&A Is Back: 3x Q2 Levels One of the strongest signals of the quarter was the resumption of activity in mergers and acquisitions. The acquisition market really rebounded in Q3 09 to over $45 billion from 231 deals, 3x greater than Q2's $15 billion. We haven't seen M&A activity at this level since Q2 08, which recorded 275 deals totaling $59 billion. Why? Large internet and media companies have faced significant R&D budget cuts in the last year, but they recognize that they need to grow to remain competitive. The weakness in the overall economy and the pullback in venture investing dragged down exit valuations. At more rational prices, large companies see acquisitions as a good use of cash. And the target acquisitions have slashed their own cost structures over the last year and proven they can grow through the downturn, making them even more attractive. Most encouraging, acquirers are adding strategically to their businesses (Amazon-Zappos, Facebook-Friendfeed, Google-On2, Yahoo!-Xoopit, VMWare-Springsource, RIM-Torch Mobile, Intuit-Mint, etc.) Some acquirers are returning to the market with multiple strategic deals (Adobe, EMC, IBM, Thomson Reuters, Yahoo!, Google, etc.) Deal making was well distributed across business segments (consumer web, retail, mobile, advertising, enterprise, biotech, cleantech) Deal-making was highly targeted during the quarter. For example, there wasn’t a big rumor mill about deals being shopped to multiple target acquirers. Instead, it appears that many individual deals came together for the right strategic reasons at rational prices and were executed promptly. In many cases, leading acquirers appear to be making preemptive moves for attractive assets, so they don't risk competitors taking the deals or paying up as valuations rise in the future. Q3 Venture Financing Is Up 17.5% Venture investments increased 17.5% to $7.7 billion in Q3 09, from $6.5 billion in Q2. Q3 09 data is on par with the numbers from Q3 08. The most recent peak period was Q2 08, which had 859 deals totaling $8.5 billion. The most recent trough was Q1 09, which had 609 deals totaling $5.5 billion. Along with the increase in venture financing, the quantity of deals financed was up 11.4% quarter-to-quarter. The number of financings is also on par with the number of deals from a year ago. Q3 New StartUps Up 25% CrunchBase estimates that 985 startups were founded in Q3 09, up 25% from Q2. This is based on 241 actual records submitted for Q3 vs 191 for Q2, and extrapolated for delays in startup self-reporting of data. We expect the rise is a bit seasonal and partly attributable to the growth of incubators and fall launch conferences, such as TechCrunch50, where large numbers of startups launch at once. The full 40-page third-quarter TechCrunch Trends report (including 30 interactive excel exhibits and 59 PDF graphics) is available for $295 as a download here. This quarter, we added a leaderboard of the 25 most active venture capital firms for Q3, including deal breakouts by round and business sector. If you’re looking for funding, the tables in this report might help you narrow your search. Trends Table of Contents here. BUY the Q3 2009 TechCrunch Trends report with Data & Graphics Pack BUY the Q3 2009 TechCrunch Trends Data & Graphics Pack Only BUY the Annual Subscription Bundle (2008 Year In Review, plus the Q1-3 2009 Reports) Of course, you're also welcome to grab the data free of charge through our CrunchBase open API. CrunchBase is the largest, free directory of statistical information about startups and technology businesses. We track over 24,500 companies (including 8,700 financings and 2,300 acquisitions), 40,400 people and 3,200 financial organizations. Check out TechCrunch Trends, our newest TechCrunch-family blog, covering, yup, the latest technology trends sourced through CrunchBase. Daniel Levine and other TechCrunch staff will be adding cool new trends there on a regular basis. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Applause For Finland: First Country To Make Broadband Access A Legal Right Posted: 14 Oct 2009 06:39 AM PDT
This is reportedly a first worldwide. Starting July 2010, every person in Finland will have the right to a one-megabit broadband connection as an intermediate step, says the Ministry of Transport and Communications. By the end of 2015, the legal right will be extended to an impressive 100 Mb broadband connection for everyone. According to Wikipedia, approximately 79 percent of the Finnish population use the Internet. Finland had around 1.52 million broadband Internet connections by the end of June 2007 or around 287 per 1,000 inhabitants. (Via IntoMobile) Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Theory: Danger’s Sidekick Data Explosion Was (DUDUNT! DUDUNT!) Sabotage? Posted: 14 Oct 2009 06:30 AM PDT  I can't stand it, i know you planned it Ima set it straight, this Watergate I can't stop textin' when i'm in there 'cause your crystal ball ain't so crystal clear So, while you sit back and wonder why I'm missing my pics when I slide my 'Kick Oh my god, it's a mirage I'm tellin' y'all it's sabotage So,so,so, so listen up 'cause you can't say nothin' You shut me down with a push of your button But AppleInsider knows why your data's gone I'll tell you now I keep it on and on: ...someone with access to the servers at the datacenter must have inserted a time bomb to wipe out not just all of the data, but also all of the backup tapes, and finally, I suspect, reformatting the server hard drives so that the service itself could not be restarted with a simple reboot (and to erase any traces of the time bomb itself)... If this was an ordinary sort of failure, the service would have come back within a day, so once again, all signs point to sabotage.   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| BigDoor Opens Doors To Public Beta Of Website And iPhone App Monetization Tool Posted: 14 Oct 2009 05:41 AM PDT
In addition, the upstart is announcing that it has raised early-stage funding ($250k) from Seattle’s Founder Co-op and a dozen angel investors, many of which are local Internet/tech CEOs. The whole idea behind BigDoor is that online monetization can be improved through technology, enabling publishers to get more money out of website visitors, game players, etc. by catering custom offers to them rather than traditional display and text advertising – contextually delivered or not. The company markets a so-called ‘Offer Platform’, a private label solution that publishers can integrate with an existing site or application with just a single line of code that can be delivered within 24 hours in most cases according to BigDoor. Publishers can use the tool to determine how their users interact with existing offers, and control the look and feel of the experience to complement their website and/or mobile application. BigDoor claims its technology can guarantee ad rates above the $1.50 to $2.00 eCPM range for most publishers. BigDoor Media was founded by CEO Keith Smith and Jeff Malek. Notably, these two men previously started Zango (formerly ePIPO, 180solutions and Hotbar) back in the nineties, a venture that was and still is associated heavily with spyware and adware. The company ran into trouble with the FTC, and was forced to close its doors mainly because of those issues. The story is neatly chronicled here by Computerworld and on Xbiz. The founders openly acknowledge the associations in the ‘About Us’ section, admitting that in the last decade they’ve made “countless mistakes”, and in this lengthy but must-read blog-post. Their past didn’t stop investors from financing the company, so it wouldn’t be fair for us to crucify BigDoor Media beforehand because of it either. If you’re a publisher or advertiser and try out the public beta, let us know what your experience with the startup’s solution is. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| WhitePages Now Lets You Control Your Own Listings Posted: 14 Oct 2009 04:38 AM PDT When was the last time you actually looked in the phone book to find someone’s number? For anyone under 40, the Web has already replaced the phone book with people search. But the listings are not always complete or up to date. One of the largest people directories online, WhitePages, is adding consumer-editing capabilities to make its people database more accurate. You can now edit your entry, and control to some extent the information that is shown on the site. For instance, you can correct and update any addresses or phone numbers associated with your name. WhitePages also lets you hide your contact information and be contacted instead through WhitePages, which acts as a communication proxy on your behalf. (It forwards contact requests via email or text message). Since the summer, WhitePages has allowed people to add their own listing, but now they can edit existing listings as well. The crowd-sourced approach is a little like JigSaw for sales contacts, except you are not supposed to edit anyone’s contact information but your own. In the future, WhitePages will allow you to add links to your Facebook, LinkedIn and other social network profiles as well. This sets a good precedent. Companies that traffic in personal data on the Web should always let the people described by the data correct it amend it, or hide it if they choose. In the end, the Web will end up with much richer data, and consumers will feel like they can at least control what information is out there about them. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Skype Founders Take A Break From Starting Lawsuits To Start Music Company Posted: 14 Oct 2009 04:19 AM PDT
Little is known about the ’secretive’ startup, and its website reveals nothing but the logo at this point. NYT reporter Brad Stone writes that the upstart boasts offices in both Los Angeles and San Francisco and that it’s going to offer a paid subscription-based music consumption and purchasing platform for both PCs and mobile phones, starting early next year. Like other startups in this field (MOG, Spotify, Deezer and many others), the main challenge for Rdio will be to get the major players from the recording industry on board to supply music to its online catalog without fear of copyright infringement litigation. Needless to say, that’s a hard and expensive nut to crack, and any executive from the labels who hasn’t forgotten and/or forgiven Friis and Zennström for creating Kazaa will be wary before signing any type of agreement with Rdio. Nevertheless, Rdio CEO Drew Larner tells the NYT that talks with music labels are “continuing and confidential”, which an exec at EMI for one confirmed. A quick Internet search appears to identify Larner as former director at Zoo Entertainment, and before that a Managing Director of Europlay Capital Advisors and Executive VP at Spyglass Entertainment Group. A search on LinkedIn only turns up Malthe Sigurdsson, a London-based designer who used to be creative director at Skype. Another interesting tidbit: they seem to own the domain name rd.io as well. Friis and Zennström have been keeping busy starting lawsuits lately: first they sued Skype owner eBay over core technology used in the VoIP service that they own, then they filed a copyright suit against eBay and the investor group that is going to buy Skype from them, and then they went on to sue former Joost chairman and CEO Mike Volpi. You have to wonder where they find the time to set up and back new startups in between. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| On Deadpool Watch: Joost Puts UK Subsidiary Into Liquidation Posted: 14 Oct 2009 03:44 AM PDT  The once immensely hyped and heavily-funded video company Joost continues its unceremonious journey to the deadpool. TechCrunch Europe has learnt that the startup, famously co-founded by Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, put its UK subsidiary into liquidation at the beginning of this month. The reasons that are given are not all too surprising: the liquidator says the company has "failed to sustain a significant share of the internet video industry and was unable to address this effectively through a re-positioning of its services." We've also learnt that the office furniture of Joost UK Limited, registered in England and Wales with number 05821718, has apparently already found its way to another startup, namely Songkick (also based in London).   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| GOOD Scores Funding, Strategic Partnerships To Help Improve The World Posted: 14 Oct 2009 01:19 AM PDT
The company – not to be confused with Good Technology – is also consolidating several of its brands (Reason Pictures, GOOD Magazine and GOOD Digital) under a single entity dubbed GOOD Worldwide. In addition to the funding, GOOD is living up to its promise to help ‘push the world forward’ by striking several strategic partnership and investment agreements. These include deals with Causes, a hugely popular Facebook and MySpace app that promotes viral donations of time and money to charities and non-profit organizations, Goodrec (a personal inspiration and recommendation service) and Govit, an application that empowers citizens to take action by connecting with their elected representatives in the United States. Founded in 2006, GOOD says its website, which is partly a network of blogs, now reaches over 2 million monthly uniques while its magazine gets into the hands of approximately two hundred thousand readers. The media company also organizes well-attended live events and produces videos that it claims have been streamed over 25 million times to date. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Google Experiments With Product Ads In Search Results Posted: 14 Oct 2009 12:50 AM PDT
Our tipster says that he’s only seeing the new ads in the developer version of Chrome, but I’m seeing them as well in Safari, though some TechCrunch staff aren’t seeing them in any browser. Google is always switching up ad placement and formats in various bucket tests, some of which are browser-specific, so the inconsistency isn’t surprising. The new formats are likely part of Google’s Product Ads program, which the company announced back in June. The program allows participants in the Google Affiliate Network to place actual product listings in their ads, complete with photos in some cases. Given the limited distribution of the ads we’re seeing, it appears that Product Ads are still in beta. Google has apparently been testing these ads for some time now — PM Digital noticed similar ads last month. Thanks to Ben for the tip. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 14 Oct 2009 12:15 AM PDT
In 2007 Technorati redesigned the look and functionality of its home page three times. Here’s the first. And the second. The last change, made under the direction of incoming CEO Richard Jalichandra, has stayed more or less constant since then. In the meantime, Technorati has focused on expanding it’s business in other areas, particularly in handling advertising for other sites. Today, only a small percentage of Technorati’s total network traffic of 25 million U.S. unique visitors per month actually visit Technorati.com. But that doesn’t mean the flagship site isn’t an important asset. And those of us blogging for more than a couple of years can remember the days when Technorati was a key blogging tool, providing, among other things, a high quality real time search engine back when Google only indexed most blogs every few weeks. Today Technorati still provides a great blog search engine and keeps what many call the definitive Top 100 list of blogs. With the new site, they are focusing more on direct Technorati content (more on that below), and properly categorizing the more popular blogs. Go check it out yourself, and here’s a rundown of the new features: Top 100 Blogs:
Technorati is also categorizing blogs among a variety of topics, and providing separate lists of top blogs for each topic. Here’s Business, for example, and Gadgets. Publish Directly To Technorati: Authors can now choose to publish content directly to Technorati to gain exposure to a wider audience. This content is highlighted on the top of the Technorati.com home page. For bloggers with a big audience this won’t be attractive. But if I was just starting out with blogging, I’d post some of my content here to gain exposure, and then cross post to my own blog. Each writer has a profile with links to their site and content they’ve written on Technorati. Search: Technorati is changing search to give much more weight towards authority and relevance over recency. For highly queried terms like “iPhone,” this cuts out a lot of noise and helps people find quality/definitive content more quickly. Users can also choose to search for blogs relevant to the query or posts elevant to the query, depending on what they are looking for. Topical Content: Technorati still shows outside content on a topical basis, too. The light green navigation bar at the top has topics like “Technology” and “Sports.” Content shown on that channel includes stuff directly written on Technorati as well as posts from blogs with high authority for the topic. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Technorati Raises Another $2 Million In Venture Capital Posted: 13 Oct 2009 10:34 PM PDT
This is, the company says, an extension of their Series D round from June 2008, where they raised $7.5 million at a roughly $35 million valuation. The company has raise a total of just over $32 million to date (much of that at a much higher valuation). The company is also in the process of raising additional capital via commercial debt, we’ve heard separately but haven’t confirmed. This funding should get the company to profitability, says CEO Richard Jalichandra. He won’t say what revenues are, except that it has more than doubled each of the last two years. He also points out that Technorati’s network, with 25 million monthly unique U.S. visitors, is now the 5th largest social media property on the Internet. In addition to its flagship site, Technorati supplies advertising to 450 or so websites – about half blogs, half niche social networks. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| MOG Over Promises And Under Delivers With New Music Service Posted: 13 Oct 2009 09:52 PM PDT
Sounds great, except users can listen to streaming on demand music for free today at MySpace Music and Spotify, which is preparing to launch in the U.S. Will MOG’s user experience be so compelling that users will pay $60/year for something they can get free elsewhere? In January we first heard MOG’s plans for the service. At the time it sounded compelling – it combined a great user experience with a free streaming model. But the crucial part of that service has vaporized – it’s no longer free. And non-free music subscription services don’t work, despite years of attempts by major companies and startups alike. We’ve championed MOG in the past, but this looks like yet another music failure to us. Too bad the labels didn’t agree to a pure revenue split, which is what CEO David Hyman was hoping for back in January. MOG has raised around $12 million to date from Menlo Ventures, Simon Equity, Universal Music Group and Sony Music, among others. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| A First Glimpse Of Chrome OS In The Flesh Posted: 13 Oct 2009 08:31 PM PDT
It would seem that the result is the browser aspect of Chrome OS running inside of Linux. As you can see in the screenshots below, it looks very similar to Chrome, the browser, on Windows (still the only officially released version of Chrome), but there are some key differences. First of all, it looks like there is a new logo of some kind. If you look in the upper left hand corner, you’ll see a a colorful circle with a white center. This is obviously different from the Chrome browser logo, which looks like the children’s game, Simon. According to Frederickson, clicking on this logo opens a Google Short Links window. Unfortunately, you need a Google.com domain (which he obviously didn’t have) to go any further. It seems reasonable to assume that this page houses a simple link page to all the major Google Apps. But what’s odd is the wording that reads, “Google is not affiliated with the contents of Google Short Links or its owners.” No clue what that means, but maybe that’s just placeholder text. Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the window, the far right side, you’ll notice a clock, a network status indicator (the “X”), and a battery level indicator. Of these, only the clock appears to be working at the moment. But all of those things are in line with what has been found in the code for Chrome OS so far. There is also a drop down menu button. Here, you’ll find the options that will be familiar to users of the browser version of Chrome. But you’ll also notice the new “Chrome OS” tab. Here, you’ll find Network options, as well as Touchpad settings. Okay, this is the point where I’ll admit it was silly to think the “touchpad” may have been some sort of device, rather than simply a notebook trackpad. I noted that was probably the case yesterday, but I also let my imagination get a little carried away. Too bad we scared Google’s “chromeos” folder off, this is getting interesting! Click on the images for larger versions (obviously, pay no attention to the Linux OS (Ubuntu) in the background of the pics) Update: Another reader, Adam Shannon, took the image below. He also had this info to share:
Update 2: But wait, there’s more. Frederickson was able to get a slightly newer build (with the “compact nav bar”) before it was taken down. More pics below. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Apple Moves To Block Jailbreaking In New iPhones Posted: 13 Oct 2009 08:25 PM PDT
For the past seven months, jailbreaking (opening an iPhone to applications not signed by Apple for installation) has relied on an exploit dubbed “24kPwn”. We’ll skip the technical voodoo for the sake of not putting you straight to sleep, but here’s the important bit: in the latest batch of iPhone 3GS units to hit the shelves, the exploit has been fixed. Unless a new exploit is discovered (and, with each patch, this is becoming less and less likely), any iPhone 3GS to ship after last week will not be jailbreakable. Read the rest of this entry at MobileCrunch >> Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 13 Oct 2009 07:41 PM PDT
No, I’m not talking about the Apple Store being taken down for its routine maintenance. I’m talking about the entire site being down, returning a “Http/1.1 Service Unavailable” error for about 15 minutes now. While sites like Apple sometimes experience slowness, they rarely completely fail. Apple uses Akamai to serve the actual website and its content, and it was down everywhere, based on some tests we ran quickly. That’s fairly crazy, and likely points to a an original source server error not on Akamai’s end. But still, you’d think Akamai would have have a cache to serve rather than an error. Let’s break out those conspiracy theories. I blame Twitter. Update: And she’s back. Seemingly, unharmed. [thanks Austin] Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Netvibes Allows Publishers To Push Updates At You, But You Can Shove Them Back Posted: 13 Oct 2009 07:32 PM PDT
Its new Premium Dashboards product gives publishers the ability to push out new content and site changes, while at the same time giving users on the other end some control over what they want to see from these changes. Regular Dashboard members will be told that there are new updates available (just as you would be with your computer operating system) and are asked to update. But Premium Dashboard members can pick and choose which updates to accept or reject. This seems like a smart play from both Netvibes and its publishers perspective because most users are probably going to choose to accept whatever changes are being pushed towards them. But at the same time, they’ll know in the back of their minds that they do have a choice not to, which is always reassuring. And this whole process maintains the simplicity that leads publishers to choose Netvibes in the first place. I also like that the demo they sent us is using Chromium for Mac, which is of course, the unreleased and unfinished Mac version of Google Chrome. Ballsy. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Dropbox Acquires The Domain Everyone Thought It Had: Dropbox.com Posted: 13 Oct 2009 07:22 PM PDT
It’s hard to gauge just how important a good domain name is to a startup’s success — after all, we’ve seen plenty of companies with meaningless names do very well for themselves. But there’s a difference between a name that’s gibberish and one that’s very easy to confuse with something else, which is a test that Dropbox failed with its GetDropbox domain. As the service has grown, so too has the amount of traffic heading to Dropbox.com, which has just featured a placeholder page full of ads. According to Compete, Dropbox.com had nearly 60,000 unique visitors last month. It’s impossible to know how many of them eventually made it to the correct domain, but there’s no doubt Dropbox has been losing out on plenty of traffic and customers. This is a big win for the startup.  Dropbox declined to comment on this story, but Justia has very recent records of a trademark dispute between Evenflow (Dropbox’s parent company) and Domains by Proxy, Inc., which was apparently operating the old domain. And it’s highly unlikely that the redirect is an accident. Update: You can see a copy of Dropbox’s complaint below. Domains By Proxy handed control over the domain back to the individual who was squatting it after Dropbox began to take legal action. The defendant had apparently begun to serve not just ads, but ads for Dropbox competitors on the page. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| What 5% Drop? ComScore Says Bing Search Share Stayed Steady In September Posted: 13 Oct 2009 06:21 PM PDT Earlier this month, a couple reports came out suggesting that Bing’s search market share took a hit in September. Hitwise reported that Bing’s share of U.S. searches was down 5 percent (in absolute terms, it was a half-point drop to 8.9 percent share). StatCounter marked an even steeper 12 percent decline (or a full 1.1 percent drop to 8.5 percent share). The headlines followed. But now comScore says all of that’s bunk. Tonight it released its qSearch market share numbers, which are widely followed on Wall Street, and they show no decline for Bing in September. According to comScore, Bing’s U.S. search market share remained steady at 9.4 percent in September, up from 9.3 percent in August. That is not blowing the doors off of anything, but it is at least holding its own. Meanwhile, Google’s share went up 0.3 point from August, to 64.9 percent share. The biggest loser was Yahoo, which was down 0.5 percent in absolute terms to 18.8 percent share. Since the beginning of the year, Yahoo is down 2.2 percentage points in share, while Google is up 1.9 percent and Bing/Microsoft is up 0.9 percentage point. Bing still has its work cut out for it, but the shine isn’t gone just yet. Here are the numbers: U.S. Core Search Share, September 2009 (Source: comScore qSearch)
(Table below via JPMorgan analyst Imran Khan. Click to enlarge.) Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Goowy Team Bails Out Of AOL To Start Assistly Posted: 13 Oct 2009 05:39 PM PDT
AOL acquired Goowy, a creator of Flash widgets, in early 2008. Now, we’ve confirmed, the core team – Alex Bard, Gary Benitt and Jeremy Suriel, have left AOL to start their next company, Assistly. Brad Birnbaum, formerly the CTO of eShare and Talisma, joins them as well. So what is Assistly? We don’t know much yet. The website says little more than “Coming soon… Customer service done right. Brought to you by Alex Bard, Brad Birnbaum, Jeremy Suriel and Gary Benitt.” But I did manage to get a little bit of information out of Bard. He says of Assistly:
That’s all we have for now. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Keepers Of The Court: Foursquare Superusers Posted: 13 Oct 2009 03:58 PM PDT
You see, some users of Foursquare that are very active earn the label “Superuser.” These are users with privileges that allow them to edit certain aspects of the site, which I’ll get into below. Full disclosure: I’m one of them, but only because I use the service so often. But I’m also only a “Superuser! – Level 1.” Today, the service started upgrading a very select group of users to the new “Superuser! – Level 2″ distinction. In total, less than 1% (0.7% to be exact) of Foursquare’s user base received that distinction. The plan is to eventually have three levels of Superusers, but right now, there are only these two, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley tells us. Level 1 users are able to edit venues (including names and cross streets), mark places as “closed,” and note duplicates. These new Level 2 users are able to merge venues themselves when there are duplicates. Eventually, Level 3 is likely to contain elements such as adding badges (rewards you get for certain check-in patterns), and policing other users, Crowley says. But the Superuser functionality is more than just for show, or a small game within the game. It’s actually helping Foursquare in a meaningful way. Shortly after the group of users got upgraded to Level 2 today, Crowley noted that, “we had some 2000+ duplicate venues in the system 30 mins ago. We’re [now] down to 400.” He followed up shortly after that noting, “it took less than 2 hours for users to go thru 90% of our merge queue.” Those are some very impressive results, and suggest that Foursquare has a community that may be able to self-police itself like Wikipedia does. If that’s the case, the company can focus less on hiring people do to the tedious stuff, and more time building new features and expanding to new cities. It also will give them more time to work on potential business deals, which will eventually make the site money. Speaking of that, there’s a pretty nifty one in Las Vegas this week if you happen to be there for Blog World Expo. If you’re over 21, stop by the Planet Hollywood Hotel for a free shot at Koi Restaurant. You simply need to check in there to get it. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   | ||||||||||||||||||||
| As Facebook Nears 100M U.S. Visitors, Twitter Falls Further Behind In The Rear-View Mirror Posted: 13 Oct 2009 03:53 PM PDT  Although Facebook recently admitted that Twitter was in its rear-view mirror, it appears that Twitter may be moving out of eyeshot. September’s U.S. comScore data has just been released and it appears that the gap between Facebook and Twitter is widening. Facebook grew by over 3 million unique visitors during the month of September, from 92.2 million unique visitors in August to 95.5 unique visitors in September. Twitter, on the other hand, is completely flatlining, barely growing over the past month. In August, Twitter received 20.8 million unique visits in the U.S. compared to 20.9 million unique visits in September. As Facebook nears 100 million unique visits in the U.S., the gap between the social network and Twitter is widening. In April, the gap was around 50 million unique visitors, with Twitter pulling on 17 million unique visitors and Facebook drawing in 67 million unique visitors. Now, the gap has grown to nearly 75 million unique visitors between to the two sites in the U.S. As we've said in the past, these estimates only count traffic to Twitter.com. It’s important to note that since more than half of Twitter users don't even go to the Website and use Twitter apps to consume and publish Tweets, Twitter's total audience could be larger. But it should be interesting to see how Facebook and Twitter fare in international numbers. I suspect that while both will continue to show growth in comScore’s worldwide numbers, Facebook’s growth will probably take place at a faster pace. This happened in July, after Facebook turned on the everyone button. Facebook may see strong numbers in September, after launching versions of Facebook Lite in Europe and Asia. Twitter is also looking to make more of a presence internationally, planning to launch versions in French, German, Italian and Spanish soon. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.   |
As the most popular video site on the planet, YouTube has a lot of content to present to users at any given time (the site says that 20 hours of footage are uploaded every minute). That poses a challenge to premium content owners and other content creators looking to attract attention, which is why YouTube also offers a premium ‘Promoted Videos’ feature that lets you pay to expose your video to other users. And today, it’s making it easier to launch a Promoted Video campaign: users will now be able to manage their Promoted Videos directly from the AdWords platform.
Kudos to the Finnish government, which has just 
After a short period of near-mandatory private beta, Bellevue, WA-based 
Blog search engine (and more recently blog/social network advertising network) 
Following 
In the endless game of cat and mouse that is Apple vs. the jailbreak scene, the cat just put a pretty nasty gash in the mouse’s face.
We’ve all grown accustomed to Twitter’s website 
If you run a website that others are going to use, there’s probably a desire to find a mixture between user-customization and putting forth your content. For simple sites, that’s easy enough, but what if you want to change the design of pages, and put in elements like new widgets? 
It’s the way of many acquisitions – a startup gets bought, and a couple of years later, after the earnout expires, the founders get an itch to start something new. 
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