Thursday, October 15, 2009

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How A Failed Poach Could Cost Mike Volpi The Skype Deal

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 08:38 AM PDT

Yesterday, the already very public fight for Skype entered yet another round, with the publication of recent filings of a motion for preliminary injunction against former Joost CEO and Chairman Mike Volpi and Index Ventures – where the man currently works as a partner – asking that he refrain from using knowledge or confidential information he obtained while at Joost in current dealings with eBay/Skype.

There are loads of interesting nuggets in the documents, which are well worth a read if you’re as fascinated by the whole thing as we are. For instance, would you have guessed both Facebook and multiple members of the Apache Software Foundation played an interesting role in this particular part of the story?

To understand why, you need to understand what the lawsuit against Volpi, brought on by Joost and Skype’s initial founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, is actually about.

According to the two European entrepreneurs / enfants terribles, Volpi (pictured) has systematically breached his fiduciary duties at Joost to become the next Chairman of Skype if it were to be effectively sold to the new investor group that has agreed to acquire the company from current owner eBay.

This group also includes Volpi’s current employer Index Ventures by the way, which is being sued by the Skype founders separately.

The allegations span three core issues: the misappropriate use of confidential information gained at Joost in an effort to entice the buy-out group to join Index Investors in a play for Skype, a misuse of the same confidential information for plans to revamp Skype’s technology in the long run, and the attempts made by Volpi to lure key Joost engineers with knowledge of JoltId’s intellectual property (GI or Global Index, the peer-to-peer protocol technology developed and owned by Friis and Zennström) to the new Skype.

The third part is where Facebook comes in, albeit indirectly.

In July 2009, then-CEO of Joost Mike Volpi according to the court documents – which includes evidence in the form of e-mail communications and more – arranged a meeting between Index Ventures’ Danny Rimer and Joost Chief Architect Justin Erenkrantz (pictured) to offer him a potential job at the new Skype.

Erenkrantz was deemed one of the online video startup’s “most valued engineers” by the company’s founders in the case.

Just for your reference, Erenkrantz is an ex-Google engineer, current President of the Apache Software Foundation and former treasurer of the association.

In addition to Erenkrantz, Volpi allegedly undertook attempts to poach Sander Striker, Director of Engineering at Joost and also a member of the ASF.

The goal of the meeting with Erenkrantz, held at an industry conference, was to have him take a look at the current endeavors within eBay to develop a technology work-around for the P2P technology intellectually owned by JoltId and get his feedback, and to assess if he would be a good new member of the Skype diligence team (pending acquisition) and the new company’s technical team after the deal was done. Soon after, an official offer to Erenkrantz was made by Volpi.

The reason why that irked Friis and Zennström tremendously, the court docs show, was because they went to great lengths to retain Erenkrantz at Joost when Facebook – after Amazon – offered the man an engineering position at the social networking company, costing Joost a lot of money. They had managed to keep him from taking a job as software developer at Google after two internships there when they first hired him, and he was clearly a very valuable asset for the company.

Straight from the docs (also embedded below):

Although Volpi’s efforts to poach both of these Joost employees were equally unlawful, his overtures to Mr. Erenkrantz were particularly threatening. As Volpi was aware, Joost had recently expended significant effort and company resources to retain him – in the face of an offer for Mr. Erenkrantz to join Facebook.

As Joost founder Janus Friis write in a June 5, 2009 e-mail to Volpi: “I spoke to Justin Erenkrantz yesterday. Given the concerns about loosing [sic] him and the signficant ripple effects it could case,” Mr. Friis sought Volpi’s approval in paying him a substantial retention bonus, increasing his salary, and offering him a position as a part-time technical consultant for Joltid. Volpi concurred in these retention efforts, and having supported Joost’s bid to keep Mr. Erenkrantz from joining Facebook, nonethless attempted to lure Mr. Erenkrantz away from Joost a month later.

For what it’s worth: Friis and Zennström, who are still eager to buy back Skype themselves, seem to have Erenkrantz on their side in this matter. This is unsurprising, because he doubles as a consultant for Joltid at the moment, but it doesn’t bode well for Volpi in this case. In a declaration, Erenkrantz unambiguously supports the Skype founders’ motion for preliminary injunction (also embedded below).

Business, egos, lawsuits and emotions. It’s like watching Dallas!


PI Brief – PUBLIC –


Declaration of Justin Erenkrantz In Support of PI –

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New Zealand: Even Google Isn’t Sure Where It Is

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 08:36 AM PDT

Poor New Zealand. Nobody is quite sure exactly where it is. A favorite joke on tourists in Sydney, my Australian friends tell me, is to convince them that the Sydney Harbor Bridge is actually a bridge to New Zealand (it isn’t, New Zealand is about 1,400 miles away). And the HBO show Flight Of The Conchords has made ignorance of New Zealand a running theme.

But at the very least Google should get it right. But Barry Schwartz has noticed that the top result for a search for Google Ireland on Google itself returns a top result of not Google.ie, but Google.nz. As does a search for Google Egypt.

Neither Ireland nor Egypt are actually New Zealand. It’s in a totally different hemisphere.

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LockerBlogger Launches Social Network For Professional Athletes, Coaches and Fans

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 07:25 AM PDT

There are many social networks catered towards the athletic community, such as eFans, Weplay, Sportsmates and others. And fan-based social networks like SuperFan and TopFans also let users pay homage to professional athletes. LockerBlogger is entering the already crowded space as a sports-centric community that connects athletes, coaches, and fans.

The social network’s hook is to get pro and famous athletes to create profiles where they can blog, post video content and give fans an inside look into their lives and training. In turn, fans can connect with professional athletes in a more engaging way.

Professional athletes can create “Pro” profiles and blog, post a voice messages, put up photos and videos. Athletes can aslo link their accounts to their Twitter stream, and access the streams (and Tweet) from LockerBlogger. And the profile is a marketing tool that athletes can use towards branding. Coaches can feature “How-To Video Clinics ,” which are videos about various skills in the fields that they have expertise in. Coaches can also post schedules, put up pictures and videos of previous games, and send out messages.

LockerBlogger already features more than 140 pro athletes, including Don Mattingly (MLB), Lawrence Taylor (NFL), Larry Johnson (NFL), Sam Casell (NBA), Jason Kidd (NBA), and Chad Morgenthaler (pro fisher).

Whie LockerBlogger has a sleek interface and innovative multimedia features for professional athletes to use, the obstacle the network will face (besides competition) is being able to drive traffic to its site. But LockerBlogger says it will soon implement Facebook Connect and launch a Facebook App.

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China Bans Foreign Investment In Lucrative Online Gaming Market? Not Quite.

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 06:47 AM PDT

Earlier this week, there was a bit of a ruckus over a mandate that was released over the weekend by the Chinese General Administration of Press and Publication and the National Copyright Administration, which suggested that foreign investors would be barred from taking stakes in China’s online game market players in virtually any form.

The circular, jointly released by the GAPP and the copyrights association said overseas bodies would be banned from investment in China’s online game operations through setting up wholly owned enterprises, joint ventures and cooperatives.

Heck, it even said foreign businesses would be prohibited from joining and controlling Chinese enterprises’ online game operations by indirect means like contracting relevant agreements or offering technological support. The new restrictions would be pure protectionism, as it would require governmental approval for all new games launched within China.

Turns out that there’s more to this story though.

Inside Social Games, which also reported on the supposed ban, updated its story shortly after publication based on a statement from a source in Beijing. Their source basically informed them that this wasn’t a new policy at all, and that the public feud was apparently part of a major bureaucratic battle between GAPP and the Chinese Ministry of Culture. “It is total BS”, he or she concluded.

Indeed, contradictory words are coming from said Ministry of Culture (MOC), from the mouth of Mr. Tuo Zuhai, the deputy director of the Department of Cultural Market who spoke at the Game Developers Conference in Shanghai earlier this week. According to Web2Asia, which exclusively posted a document with the transcribed speech of the government official (also embedded below).

A choice quote:

“I am deeply touched by the statements of the general managers of several companies. General Administration of Press and Publication must stop the surly interference in domestic online game enterprises. It is MOC's duty to ensure the long-term development of China's culture industry, especially the game industry. Now is the season when the new replace the old and the still cold weather is about to become warm. I believe we will certainly usher the sunny days when the dark clouds will definitely gone with the wind.”

And:

“Ministry of Culture is further stressed to be the competent authority in charge of the administration of online games. Recently General Administration of Press and Publication issued another notice and this will surely accelerate the full control by MOC. This is an major and important issue of right and wrong, and is a matter of principle, as mentioned the day before yesterday by the officials of the Office of Central Institutional Organization Commission. We will never compromise on such a matter of principle.”

To make a long story short, this is a political power struggle, and last weekend’s statement by the GAPP that caused many media outlets to report the ban as fact is simply a small part of that and by no means anything definitive.

The second document we embedded hereunder is a translation of a notification from the Chinese Ministry of Culture dated September this year, just before GAPP issued its counter-announcement. The document clarifies once again that it is the sole administration body for the operation of online games in China. The document also refers to the delays in re-launching World of Warcraft in China, after Blizzard had decided to discontinue working with The9 as their exclusive operator and awarded the contract to its competitor NetEase.

Why does all this matter?

All of the large Chinese game companies are listed on international stock exchanges and/or invested in by foreign VCs, as are many promising startups in the field. And we’re talking about a huge, enormously lucrative industry here: China’s online gaming revenues grew 39.5% to $906 million year-on-year in the second quarter of 2009 and is expected to near $1 billion soon, with online operator Tencent Holdings leading the charge ahead of competitors Shanda and World of Warcraft operator NetEase. A recent Reuters report cited data from Analysys International, which said Tencent captured 20 percent of the overall Chinese online gaming market during the quarter. Earlier this year, Pearl Research predicted the Chinese online gaming market would reach a stunning $5.5 billion by 2012, and this seems well within reach.

An August report from Niko Partners forecast that there will be 65 million online gamers in China by year-end.

It would be a serious measure if the Chinese government were to ban any type of foreign involvement in this business, but fortunately it doesn’t appear that the strict regulations the copyright associations and the GAPP would like to see enforced are not going to become a reality any type soon, if ever.


Leaders of Ministry of Culture Proclaim that A Matter of Principle Shall Never Be Compromised –


Office of Central Institutional Organization Commission clarifies management responsibility of online games –

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Nokia Posts First Quarterly Loss In A Decade And Why It Matters

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 06:42 AM PDT

Nokia's shares are down 6.02 percent today on news that Nokia suffered an $834 million loss due to falling handset sales. In this environment it's easy to wave this away as a crisis blip but there may be something more afoot. Nokia blamed the loss on component shortages, a valid concern. Apple has been buying up all the flash it can eat and companies like LG and Samsung are blowing out feature phones to directly compete with Nokia's lower-end models faster than anyone thought possible.

Who’s Scorched Up comScore In September, You Ask?

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 05:59 AM PDT

ComScore_Answers.com
What site has jumped five spots between August and September to become the 13th most visited site in the US, leapfrogging properties like New York Times and Viacom Digital?

Here are some hints: It’s listed on the NASDAQ. It was founded in Israel and its R&D center is located in Jerusalem. It has raised funding from high-profile angel investors Dr. Yossi Vardi and Ron Conway. Can you name the company?

The answer is—Answers.com.

Exemplifying that startups are long hauls, Answers.com, née GuruNet, has been plugging away since its founding in 1999. Ten years later, comScore’s September 2009 data places the reference and Q&A site as the 13th most popular site in the United States, pulling in 56.4M unique users. This is a whopping 25% increase on Answers.com’s August numbers.

I had a chance to speak to CEO Bob Rosenschein this morning, who attributes the increase to a few factors. First, there’s seasonality. Answers.com is familiar with a traffic surge that typically comes this time of year as a result of students getting back to school.

Second, Answers.com has chosen to integrate with comScore using Hybrid Measurement, a combination of server side and census measurement. This may have a real impact because sites that have chosen not to integrate in a similar manner may actually be detrimentally affected by comScore’s ability to gain better metric data from sites that have gone ahead with the integration. This means that comScore’s numbers can be off, but there’s nothing new under the sun here.

The third reason is a bit more interesting as it sheds light on a little known fact. Answers.com consolidated WikiAnswers—its user generated Q&A—site into the Answers.com domain, thereby capitalizing on the aggregated traffic. What’s interesting through is that WikiAnswers is on a tear, with 5.6M answers submitted by some 3.6M registered members. While attention to Q&A products/sites of late has focused on the likes of Vark and Hunch, WikiAnswers has just surpassed the 400-pound Q&A gorilla known as Yahoo! Answers, becoming the leading Q&A site on the web. Bet you didn’t know that.

In 2010 Answers.com will be placing particular emphasis on extending its products into the mobile and social networking arenas. We’ll have to wait and see if these catapult the company’s traffic up even further.

WikiAnswers vs Yahoo Answers

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Why Kai-Fu Lee Turned Down Steve Jobs (And Is Still Cool with That)

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 05:14 AM PDT

Charlie-The-UnicornBEIJING, CHINA– Kai-Fu Lee may have left his post as president of Google China, but he didn't go very far. While still president he learned that Google was going to give up some of its space at Beijing's Tsinghua Science Park.

He called the landlord and told him he'd take as much as he’d give him. And now he’s in the next office on the same floor, hoping a Chinese version of Larry or Sergey walks through his door.

As we reported a few weeks ago, Lee is also taking a few Google China staff members and indirectly some of that Google cash in the form of an investment from YouTube founder Steve Chen, among others.

His new venture is called Innovation Works, and it's a sort of angel fund/incubator to help encourage Chinese entrepreneurs to eschew staid-but-prestigious corporate tech life and start a company instead. I met with Lee this week at his new digs in Beijing and so far, they're pretty empty. There are a few analysts and engineers huddled by the door, near a table overflowing with different kinds of tea that people have given Lee as a good luck gesture in starting this new venture. (There's so much tea, in fact, he insisted on my taking a tin.)

That elbow room won't last: Lee got 7,000 resumes on his first day of business and has gotten some 40,000 total. It's taking a while to plow through them, but he expects to hire at least 100 more people in the coming months. In fact, between our meeting Monday morning and sharing some Peking Duck later that night, he made four hires. (I shot a quick video with Lee talking more about Innovation Works. Unfortunately, my Flip has died for good, and it’s gone. So text will have to suffice.)

Lee is that rare unicorn-of-a-specimen that Silicon Valley companies and investors salivate over: He's held key product and management roles at Apple, SGI, Microsoft and Google building a deep bench of respect and contacts in the inner circle of the U.S. tech business, but he’s also a hero to many young techies in China.

Want an example of the former? Back in the late 1990s, the product line he'd developed for SGI was struggling and being sold off to a company that would later be bought by Computer Associates.

That ultimately meant Lee was looking for a new job. His father—a Taiwanese diplomat—had asked Lee on his deathbed to return to China one day, and a job with Microsoft was making that promise a reality.

Lee had decided to take it, but few people knew yet. He went home one day and his wife said, "Steve from Apple wants you to call." Lee mentally paged through the Steves he'd worked for at Apple—never thinking of the obvious one. Lee had worked at Apple during the bleak years before CEO Steve Jobs returned to the company, or as Lee likes to say, "I was at Apple between Jobs."

"I think it was Steve Jobs," his wife said of the caller. Lee insisted it couldn't be true, since he'd never even met him, but called the number back all the same. It was Jobs and he personally asked Lee to come back to Apple. Lee demurred.

"I know you're going to work for Microsoft in China," Jobs said. Lee was stunned. Almost no one knew. For a moment he must have thought his-iPhone-ness really was as all-powerful as the fanbois say. Then Jobs added, "Your wife told me." When Lee asked why she divulged the closely-held secret she shrugged and said Jobs was so nice on the phone, she assumed he was one of Lee’s close friends.

Lee resisted Jobs, and you could argue missed out on the golden era of Apple as a result. But the Microsoft job meant that Lee was also an early multinational tech manager in China. Since then, between Microsoft and Google he's given fat incomes and prestige to hundreds of Chinese entrepreneurs, building quite a following in China. (At dinner a young woman shyly came over and asked for his autograph.)

To be fair, Lee has his detractors in China too. Critics question whether the longtime corporate executive has the chops to pick and fund truly innovative ideas. After all, Lee himself said in our interview a few weeks ago that executives at multinationals typically don't have the hunger to be great entrepreneurs. Others say he's one of those bridge-builders between East and West that benefits by talking up business in China as being more complex than it really is.

After one meeting and one dinner, I can't say whether either of those complaints are fair. But after spending several weeks in China in the last few months I will say this: If his well-cultivated reputation convinces more Chinese entrepreneurs to start businesses, that's good for China and the tech world globally.

(Image of Lee courtesy of Abondance)

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Spigit Raises $10 Million For Social Productivity Software

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 04:50 AM PDT

Social productivity startup Spigit raised $10 million in Series B funding from private equity firm Warburg Pincus. This brings Spigit’s total funding up to $14 million. Spigit’s CEO and Founder, Paul Pluschkell says that the company will use the funds towards product development, and sales and marketing efforts.

Spigit’s products help businesses and teams contribute ideas, offer feedback and evaluate concepts to streamline idea generation and promote innovation. Spigit recently launched integration with Microsoft SharePoint, which includes a dashboard that provides real-time updates on activity, hot topics and employee contributions within a business, an advanced analytics engine that identifies the best ideas among all contributions and a customizable workflow systems to manage ideation. The software also evaluates employees and offers an incentive and rewards program.

Spigit's software has some big name clients IBM, Pfizer, Lloyds Banking Group, Walmart, MedPlus, Southwest Airlines and Choice Hotels International. The startup faces competition from Jive and BrightIdea.

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Twitter Will Sell No Wine Before Its Time (But They Will Sell Wine)

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 03:43 AM PDT

Screen shot 2009-10-15 at 3.30.27 AMIn some circles, money is known as “cheese.” As we all know, Twitter has yet to make any of it. But they are now making something that pairs nicely with cheese: Wine.

No, seriously, Twitter has its own wine label, Fledgling Wine, which it’s launching today in partnership with San Francisco-based winery Crushpad. Right now you’re thinking one of two things: 1) Is this the new Twitter business model? 2) Is Twitter completely insane? Actually, neither. Instead, this is a side venture for a good cause. All proceeds are going to Room to Read, an organization that encourages literacy for children around the world.

So what kind of wine is Twitter selling? Two kinds: A 2009 Fledgling Pinot Noir and a 2009 Fledgling Chardonnay. Each 750ml bottle costs $20, or you can get a case (12 bottles) for $240. For each bottle sold, $5 is going towards Room to Read, with the rest going towards the production of the wine. “Every case sold will provide approximately 60 local language children's books and promote education in the world's poorest regions,” it says on the site.

Here’s the intro from Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams on the site:

As a company that’s only one percent into its journey, we’re always thinking about our long term impact on the world. The Fledgling Initiative embodies two things that are at the core of Twitter’s mission: providing access to information and highlighting the power of open communication to bring about positive change. This initiative is just one piece of that approach. Take part in this mission and pre-buy our limited bottles of the wine. You can follow along with our wine-making activities on Twitter and at some points even participate in its creation. For each bottle you buy, $5 will be donated to Room to Read, a transformational non-profit that brings books, libraries and ultimately literacy to people in the poorest areas around the world. The efforts of Room to Read will benefit literacy, and in doing so they’ll allow Twitter to grow. Because if you can’t read you can’t Tweet!

If you do buy some Twitter wine, it’s important to note that this is a pre-order; the actual wine will not be bottled until August 2010. Yes, almost a year from now. But, as the saying goes, “We will sell no wine, before its time.”

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Update On Microsoft/Sidekick Debacle: “Most, If Not All” Data Will Get Recovered

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 03:08 AM PDT

Turns out our source had it right: Microsoft engineers who worked on the Danger/Sidekick meltdown have been able to recover “most if not all” of the data that was lost during last weekend’s catastrophic server failure.

In a statement, Roz Ho, Corporate VP of Premium Mobile Experiences addresses the unfortunate T-Mobile Sidekick customers and apologizes for the massive fail:

On behalf of Microsoft, I want to apologize for the recent problems with the Sidekick service and give you an update on the steps we have taken to resolve these problems.

We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage. We plan to begin restoring users' personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.

She adds that there’s now a belief that only a minority of Sidekick users were affected by the outage, but did not share exact numbers. She refers customers who believe they’ve been affected to the T-Mobile Sidekick forum for more updates about when data restoration will commence, and any steps they may need to take on their side. Microsoft says it will work with T-Mobile to post the next update on data restoration timing no later than Saturday.

And about the actual failure, which turns out not to be sabotage after all as we assumed:

We have determined that the outage was caused by a system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back-up. We rebuilt the system component by component, recovering data along the way. This careful process has taken a significant amount of time, but was necessary to preserve the integrity of the data.

Microsoft states it has made changes to improve the overall stability of the Sidekick service and initiated a more resilient backup process to ensure that the integrity of their DB is maintained.

It’s still a giant fuck-up, but at least the users (well, most) will get their data back. But the whole debacle has reflected very poorly on all companies involved, and it will linger for long.

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About That Chrome OS Event

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 02:37 AM PDT

Screen shot 2009-10-15 at 2.32.43 AMWe’ve been reporting a lot about Chrome OS the past few days. Possible features, screenshots, early builds — lots of good stuff. And tomorrow was promising to bring even more as yes, there’s an event partially dealing with Chrome OS scheduled to take place on Google’s Mountain View campus. But sadly, we’ve been banned from the event.

Truth be told, all press is now banned from the event, we were told this evening. And that sucks because just yesterday we were confirmed as attendees and had planned to report on what we saw and heard. But then PC World and The Next Web spilled the beans on the event, and Google decided to ban the press.

However, before they banned us and closed down registrations, we did manage to get the confirmation email about the event.

The event, dubbed Front End Engineering Open House will feature “presentations on Google Maps and Chrome OS, YouTube will be unveiling their new look and showcasing YouTube 3-D.”

While the presentation on Chrome OS is obviously the thing that first caught our eye, the “new look” for YouTube certainly sounds interesting. As does the showcase of YouTube 3D, something we covered a bit of this summer.

Here are the other key details:

When: Thursday, October 15th, 2009

6:00pm-9:00pm

Where: Google Headquarters

Program

6-7pm | Registration & Networking
7-8 pm | Presentations

Welcome by Adam Sah
Maps – Dan Barcay
Chrome OS – Ben Goodger
YouTube – Chris Zacharias & Igor Kofman
Panel Q&A

8:05-9pm | Networking & Demos

Should be interesting, too bad we can’t go. Anyone who does, feel free to film it and send us the video. tips [at] techcrunch.com.

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Put.io Is An Interesting New Cloud Storage Service

Posted: 15 Oct 2009 02:35 AM PDT

So imagine a service that downloads files from Rapidshare for you, then saves them on your 50GB account.

Or forget about Rapidshare, maybe it collects files from Bittorrent automatically.

Or lets you watch a DivX video online, without downloading it to your computer, in high quality, and listen to your music files inside your browser. Put.io will be launched as a paid service.

The service is in private beta right now, but they soon plan to accept beta users.

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GridIron Live: A Rich, 3D Football Game On Facebook Platform

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 11:57 PM PDT

It’s fall, and that means it’s football season. And while Madden has long been the dominant force in Football video games, he’s getting some new competition this year that’s looking to tap into the same market that has made fantasy football and coaching sims incredibly popular. One of these games, which we covered last week, is called Quick Hit. And today sees the launch of another: gaming studio Challenge Games has just launched GridIron Live, a Facebook-based football coaching sim that features 3D graphics.

For those that aren’t familiar with the genre: GridIron Live and QuickHit have the same high quality graphics as most modern video games, but they don’t feature the twitch-based gameplay you’ll find in Madden. Instead, you act as your team’s coach, picking plays and watching as your digital players fare against your opponent’s play calling. This can be a bit frustrating at times when something out of your hands goes wrong, but that’s true for any coaching job. And it’s a genre that’s become quite popular, though most of the other coaching sims have been far more basic.

The biggest difference between QuickHit and GridIron is that QuickHit requires a downloadable client built in Adobe AIR, whereas GridIron Live is built in Flash, doesn’t require a download, and is a Facebook app. This means that GridIron has a much lower barrier to entry (which is going to be key, as it’s a Facebook game), but the experience is less immersive, as everything is constrained to the Flash pane within Facebook in your browser. In terms of looks, GridIron looks great for a Flash game, sporting 3D graphics that are about on par with the original Playstation (CEO Andrew Busey says it’s the first 3D football game on the web). In contrast, QuickHit uses sprites which look cleaner and more polished, but aren’t in 3D.

Off the field, GridIron will allow gamers to purchase better players, as well as new plays that they can use to expand their playbooks. To buy these, gamers can use the tokens they earn in-game as they complete various tasks, or they can purchase them using real money. QuickHit uses a similar virtual goods model.

One of GridIron’s greatest assets is its integration with Facebook, which will be key in helping it spread virally. Whenever you finish a game you’re given the option to share your greatest in-game accomplishment (for example, your longest pass ever) with your friends.

Challenge Games is the Sequoia-funded studio behind hit games like Duels and Baseball Boss. Now, the studio is looking to bring its tradition of high quality games over to Facebook. Along with GridIron Live, Challenge is planning to release a handful of other games to Facebook in the next 60 days.



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Source: Microsoft May Be Able To Restore All Of The Lost Sidekick Data, After All

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 11:00 PM PDT

Take this with a grain of salt, because we haven’t been able to confirm it with Microsoft, but we’ve heard from a source that employees inside Microsoft who are working on the Danger/Sidekick meltdown are optimistic that they’ll be able to recover all of the data that was lost during last weekend’s catastrophic server failure. That’s a big change from what we were hearing a few days ago, when T-Mobile said that the data was “almost certainly” gone for good.

Since then, T-Mobile’s tone has changed: there have been reports of some users turning their Sidekicks on to find that their data had been restored, and earlier this week T-Mobile issued a new statement that said “Recent efforts indicate the prospects of recovering some lost content may now be possible.”

Even if Microsoft’s engineers do mange to recover all of the lost data, all parties involved will still take a huge hit in consumer trust, negative press, and questions about the integrity of “the cloud”. But it would certainly soften the blows, and could also help Microsoft and T-Mobile fend off the pending lawsuits from users who lost data.

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MySpace, YourSpace, Whatever. Ali Partovi Is Win.

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 10:31 PM PDT

One thing about MySpace – they’ve always had far more colorful executives than the more buttoned up Facebook exec team. Of course, those partying and committing federal crimes days are history with the new team in place.

Or so we thought…

A new group of execs were brought in today. And among them are the cofounders of music startup iLike, Ali Partovi and Hadi Partovi. As usual, we peruse the MySpace profiles of new execs because every once in a while we find a new exec hire that hasn’t actually ever used the service.

All the new execs appear to have MySpace profiles. But just before I signed out of the last one i checked, Ali Partovi, a video he uploaded caught my eye. He says “Here’s a little video I just made for the MySpace sales conference next week (Oct 13-15). They told everybody, “make a video showing how MySpace is YOUR space”…..”

Anyway, meet your new SVP Business Development at MySpace, who is most definitely not buttoned up and boring. We’ve also added this video to his Crunchbase profile. Because we can never, ever let him live this down:


MYSpace-ali partovi

ali | MySpace Videos

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Google Unwraps Android’s Giant Eclair

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 08:14 PM PDT


The Android robot that graces Google’s front lawn got a new dessert friend today: a giant Eclair, drizzled with some chocolate syrup. The Eclair now sits alongside two other over-sized confections: an enormous cupcake and an intimidatingly large donut. You can see a video of the upwrapping of the new treat below, taken by Android engineer Dan Morrill according to Androidandme.

The dessert trio is, of course, a product of Google’s quirky sense of humor: each Google Android release has a dessert codename (Cupcake was 1.5 and Donut was 1.6, and Eclair is 2.0), and the Android team puts out a new giant sculpture to coincide more or less with the software’s release.

What that means is that we’re likely very close to seeing Android 2.0, codename Eclair, for the first time. Nothing’s for certain yet (Google hasn’t made any announcements), but when a Donut was spotted in front of Google back in September the developer release was out within a few days.

There have also been persistent rumors that Motorola’s Sholes phone (AKA Droid and Tao) will be making its debut by the end of the month, and that it will be the first phone to feature Eclair, so the timing lines up.

Also worth noting: the video below was taken by an Android phone, and given that this is the Android team we’re talking about it’s reasonable to think they’re testing out the latest-and-greatest. Looking good.



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Is TwitPic Taking Ads A Little Too Far?

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 08:10 PM PDT

I spend a good amount of time on Twitter, and a lot of links go to websites, videos, and pictures. One of the leading services that lets Twitter users upload pictures is TwitPic. TwitPic was one of the very first companies to let Twitter users enable photo sharing, and due to the amount of traffic and traction TwitPic was getting, their servers couldn’t handle the load. From that point, many other services have come out, and it looks like yFrog is now leading the pack.

Hosting can be expensive — I know. But do you really have to take it this far, TwitPic? Upon looking at TechCrunch Developer Andy Brett’s photo hosted on TwitPic of Michael’s dog, Laguna, I was unpleasantly surprised with a huge overlay ad of Second Life. The whole point of Twitpic is to see pictures posted by people you (kinda) know. Blocking those pictures with a gigantic overlay ad showing avatars of people you don’t know is counterproductive.

Hopefully with all the money TwitPic is getting from these ads, they can fix their hosting problems. Otherwise, people will start to think twice about clicking on those Twitpic links.

TwitPic Ad

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Review: Motorola CLIQ

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 08:10 PM PDT

The Short Version Motorola has released the phone it should have released a few years ago to compete with phones like the Helio Ocean and feature phones from LG and Samsung. Android brings this phone into the 21st century and the QWERTY keyboard and BLUR UI tweaks will please those looking for a keyboard Android phone with social networking features.

MySpace Fills Out Executive Roster With New Hires, iLike Execs

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 05:38 PM PDT

MySpace has just announced the appointment of four new members to its executive team, which saw a major shakeup last April. The new hires include Nada Stirratt, who will serve as Chief Revenue Officer and Dustin Finer, who is now Chief People Officer. Joining them will be iLike founders (and brothers) Ali Partovi, who is now SVP of Business Development based in San Francisco, and Hadi Partovi as SVP of Technology, based out of Seattle.

MySpace acquired streaming music service iLike in August for $20 million.

Other recent MySpace hires include Mark Rosenbaum as CFO and Alex Maghen as CTO (he was formerly CTO of MySpace Music, now he heads technology at MySpace proper as well).

Below is MySpace’s bio about Stirratt, who served as EVP of Digital Advertising at MTV before joining MySpace:

Prior to MySpace, Stirratt served as Executive Vice President of Digital Advertising at MTV Networks where she oversaw advertising sales and strategy, ad operations, Digital Fusion-integrated marketing, and Tribes, the company's third-party vertical affiliate network. Before MTV, Nada served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of advertising sales at Advertising.com. Earlier in her career, Stirratt worked in ad sales and business development for such entertainment brands as AOL-Time Warner, Moviefone, Allure and Cosmopolitan.

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This Is Why Apple’s iFrame Is A Bad Idea

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 04:34 PM PDT

Yesterday, word got out of Apple's new iFrame standard, which purports to expedite video editing by keeping the video in "the same format used on a computer." Really, it's nothing but a resolution and wrapper. So why am I losing my mind over it? Because the way iFrame is being positioned and propagated is misleading and harmful to consumers. Oh I know, what an alarmist, right? It's just a video format! But with personal video becoming more and more ubiquitous and invading class after class of gadgets, these former trivialities are becoming more important by the day. And for once, we are actually gravitating towards a couple unified standards in both encoding and resolution — and then Apple butts in with this ugly stepchild of a format.

AT&T Continues Its Attack Against Google Voice With A Second Letter To The FCC

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 03:48 PM PDT

The back-and-forth between AT&T, Google, and the FCC over Google Voice’s blocking of some rural telephone numbers continues, and it’s getting even nastier. AT&T’s latest letter to the FCC attempts to undermine Google’s recent argument that it’s blocking exorbitantly expensive calls to some numbers in part because they are associated with sex lines. In fact, AT&T says, some of the numbers being blocked include an ambulance service, church, Benedictine nuns, doctors, and more. Oh, and that’s not AT&T’s only problem with Google — it also thinks that the FCC should consider regulating the search giant on the web as well.

The letter (which we’ve embedded below) is long, first detailing in depth AT&T’s problems with Google Voice, which it says should be held to the same rules as AT&T and other tradional carriers are. The letter then goes on a lengthy argument making the case that if the FCC fails to regulate Google now, the search giant could use its “gatekeeper control” over the Internet to block access to applications:

But Google's call blocking begs an even more important question that the Commission must consider as it evaluates whether to adopt rules regarding Internet openness. If the Commission is going to be a "smart cop on the beat preserving a free and open Internet," then shouldn't its "beat" necessarily cover the entire Internet neighborhood, including Google? Indeed, if the Commission cannot stop Google from blocking disfavored telephone calls as Google contends, then how could the Commission ever stop Google from also blocking disfavored websites from appearing in the results of its search engine; or prohibit Google from blocking access to applications that compete with its own email, text messaging, cloud computing and other services; or otherwise prevent Google from abusing the gatekeeper control it wields over the Internet?

The letter continues after that, detailing all of the times when Google may have exercised its power to somehow restrict free speech or show favoritsm toward certain political views that were in line with its own. AT&T even pulls out Google’s famous “don’t be evil motto”, asserting that Google should have “no objection to abiding by the Internet Policy Statement and other net neutrality principles it advocates with respect to Google Voice and all of the Internet-based services, applications and content that it offers.”

Finally, AT&T summarizes its arguments with a document called “The Truth About Google Voice and the Open Internet Principles“, where it presents four supposed lies being told by Google, each tagged with the heading “What Google Wants You to Believe” (duh duh duh), followed by AT&T’s response, “The Truth“. That document begins on page 9 of the embed below.

It’s all worth a read, but once again it’s hard to listen to AT&T’s argument’s for net neutrality when it concludes the letter by saying it’s against changes in policy in the first place. Still, AT&T does raise some interesting points, and it’s likely we’ll be hearing similar debates as the line between telecommunication services and Internet services continues to blur. For now though, the FCC doesn’t seem to buying the net neutrality angle. From the Washington Post:

Sources at the FCC who spoke on the condititon of anonymity said the FCC inquiry focuses on the question of potential violations of telecommunications law. The agency does not plan to look into potential violations of net neutrality — or open-Internet guidelines — because officials didn’t appear to agree with such claims.


attletterfccgoogvoice –

Document via The Washington Post.

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Layar Brings Augmented Reality Browser To The iPhone (Screenshots)

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 02:24 PM PDT

Half an hour ago, I just had an iPhone 3GS. Now, I have an iPhone 3GS with Layar installed.

It was one of the main questions I had for the Dutch company, which markets an augmented reality browser, when they launched at the Mobile 2.0 Europe event in Barcelona last year. When would they be complementing their Android program with an application for the iPhone?

They said it’d come in the fall of this year, and while there have been a number of AR applications made available on the App Store in the meantime, Layar’s finally arrived a couple of hours ago and it’s worth a second look. (iTunes link)

In case the concept of augmented reality is still new to you, basically it’s the placement of a digital layer of information on top of a real-life view of the world around you, as seen through e.g. a mobile phone’s camera lens. Using augmented reality, you could be using your smartphone to glance around the main square of a city you’re visiting and get up-to-date information about nearby restaurants, ATMs, real estate offers, and more on-screen, bolted on top of what you’d be seeing if you weren’t looking through the lens.

And if you’re not familiar with the place you’re at, you can ideally place it on top of a map to help you get the right directions, and if you find for instance a sea food restaurant even fetch user reviews to check out if it’s considered to be a decent place, as well as contact information to book a table right from where you’re standing.

Layar does all that, and does it well. I used the iPhone application – which is entirely free, by the way – to find pizza places here in the Brussels region, and I was able to locate dozens of places where I could get one simply by rotating the camera around my house. If you want, you can filter the distance in between 1 and 10 kilometers to narrow your search down.

Layar also boasts its own little developer ecosystem (and even 3D support), so it has so-called ‘layars’ in place mostly made by third-party developers that you can use to enhance what you’re able to see through the camera lens using the app (e.g. for viewing Twitter contacts around you). There are two options in the menu: ‘Featured’, extra layers that were selected by the startup, and ‘Popular’, obviously based on usage. Finally, there’s an integration with Google Local Search which lets you launch searches for places you find using the ‘Reality Browser’.

Layar is great, but it’s not the only AR app in the App Store. First, there’s Mobilizy with their Wikitude browser and then we recently wrote up Robotvision, which does much of what Layar does but is powered by Bing. Gawker recently covered a few more.

All hype or game-changing? It’s still early days for augmented reality, but I’m bullish on it.

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Layar
iPhone 3GS
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Want That Early Chrome OS Build? You Got It.

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 02:03 PM PDT

Screen shot 2009-10-14 at 2.01.31 PMThe hits keep on coming from Jonathan Frederickson, the TechCrunch reader who turned our initial revelation of a “chromeos” folder on the Chromium build site into a full-on walk through. Today, he’s doing what Google won’t: Making the early Chrome OS build available for download.

Frederickson has placed the files he downloaded a few days ago on a Rapidshare account for anyone to access. You can find them here.

Will Google be pleased about this? Probably not, considering they removed the files from the Chromium folder shortly after our post. But whatever, it’s open source, yo.

As a reminder, you’ll only be able to install this if you have Linux.

As a bonus, Frederickson also posted a couple screenshots of what the Chrome OS browser build looks like themed. Find those below.

chromeostheme

chromeostheme2

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Video: Watch Erick Talk About TechCrunch

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 01:13 PM PDT

Our own co-editor Erick Schonfeld is currently chatting on WatchMojo Live. He’s being interviewed by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan about the site and other random things. Watch it below.

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Payvment Enables Retail Storefronts On Facebook Via PayPal’s Adaptive Payments API

Posted: 14 Oct 2009 12:51 PM PDT

In an effort to compete with Amazon’s Flexible Payments API, PayPal recently announced its version of the API, called Adaptive Payments (which we scooped over the summer). PayPal’s API gives developers full access to PayPal's features, allowing them a lot more freedom in building applications, which includes the ability to accept and distribute payments. Over the course of the past few month, PayPal has been working with several startups as part of a pilot program to show the capabilities of the API in anticipation of a broader rollout in November. Payvment, which powers online shopping cart technologies and uses PayPal as a payment mechanism, is launching a potentially revolutionary new Facebook app that would let anyone set up a retail storefront on Facebook.

Payvment was originally developed as a web service that would allow any site owner to integrate a shopping cart into their e-commerce offering. You can add the technology to your site by simply adding one line of code to the site. Payvment’s Facebook App is more comprehensive and lets anyone create a retail store on Facebook. The app lets you set up products, categories of products (i.e. shoes, T-shirts, sweaters), import photos, list terms of service and shipping options and more. Once you set up your online shop on Facebook, it will show up in a separate tab on your profile or page under “storefront”.

Once the shop is set up, potential buyers can interact with the storefront like they would a -commerce site. You can add desired products to your cart and remove them easily. Payvment also lets buyers conduct searches within the store. When a user adds a product to their shopping cart on Facebook and clicks to follow-through on buying the product, Payvment takes the user to a separate page outside of Facebook, where the user can use PayPal to buy the object. Payvment’s CEO and founder, Christian Taylor, tells me that it is necessary to conduct the transaction on a separate site because Facebook doesn’t yet offer e-commerce security options. And any purchases made will not be made pubic to your friends.

Payvment’s shopping cart is also integrated with any other shop using its application. So if you put a shirt from store “x” in your cart and also placed a shirt from store “y” in the cart, both would show up on either retail site. Basically, Payvment creates a unified shopping cart across Facebook for buyers. Retailers with standalone sites who want to use Payvment’s shopping cart experience can also implement Facebook Connect, to let consumers access their personal shopping cart from Facebook. And retailers can customize their carts within their sites to fit into their UI.

Of course, there are ways to sell virtual goods on Facebook, including Facebook’s own payment system, and a few storefronts have already been popping up on Facebook, including apps for 1-800-Flowers and Sears. With these retailers, transactions are completed outside of Facebook, on the retailers page. Payvment adds to this functionality to by letting anyone set up a retail storefront for free. Taylor adds that this app will eventually be made available on other social networks. One of the draws of Payvment is that its code and Facebook app are free for the moment. So retailers don’t have to put any money up to set up their shopping cart and storefront.

Payvment, which will be launched to the public on Nov. 3 and PayPal’s Innovate Conference, seems like a innovative way to integrate social e-commerce on Facebook. It seems like a no-brainer for smaller retailers which don’t have well-established sites to create a revenue stream through Facebook. In fact, even larger retailers who have established e-commerce sites can feature and sell a select group of products within Facebook. And retailers, both big and small, are flocking to Facebook for marketing purposes, why not add the ability to buy as well? Personally, I’d love to see a virtual mall on Facebook with multitudes of retailers.

PayPal is smart to engage developers in the early stages of releasing this new API. The company also partnered with TechCrunch50 demopit startups FundRazr and Lottay to build off the adaptive payments API. In fact, PayPal’sPayPal X Innovate 2009 conference in November is designed to attract more developers to the platform. The new APIs will only be released to those developers that attend the conference. Although, we scooped the news of the new Adapative Payments API, PayPal says that additional APIs will be announced at the conference. It should be interesting to see what these APIs enable developers to build, considering the impressive vision PayPal has for the future.

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