The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Ask.com Commercials Put Baby Seals In Jeopardy
- DigABand Empowers Independent Musicians To Boost Their Online Presence
- Video Hilarity: Windows 7 Launched On a MacBook Pro on NBC’s The Today Show
- The Ad-Supported World: Ready or Not, Here It Comes
- Single Currency Fails To Destroy Online Borders In Europe
- Kikin Personalizes Search By Tapping Into Your Social Graph
- Infosys Co-founder Sells Part Of His Stake, Turns Venture Capitalist
- Judge Dismisses Ridiculous Craigslist Prostitution Lawsuit, Plaintiff Mulls Appeal
- Upgrading To Windows 7? Easily Install Multiple Software Programs With Ninite
- To Revitalize iPhone App Sales, Get T-Mobile And Dana Carvey To Pimp A Copycat Android App
- Full Circle In Sight As Inventor Of The World Wide Web Signs Up For Twitter
- That Was Fun, But Now Nokia’s Looking To Sell Off Dopplr
- Opera Mini Now Serving Over 500 Million Pageviews Per Day
- Hey Apple, Please Fix My Bricked iMac, Then Trash Microsoft
- Mozilla’s Raindrop Looks To Make Your Inbox Personal Again
- Sean Parker: Twitter/Facebook Will Soon Dominate The Web — Not Google.
- Web 2 Summit: Tim Armstrong On AOL Spin Off, Content, And A Mysterious New Tech
- MySpace’s Jason Hirschhorn Gets Off On Killing Products
- Excitement For Hardware Keeps Sergey Brin Up At Night. And Maybe Chrome For Mac Too.
- The New CNN.com (First Screenshots)
- PayPal Continues To Be eBay’s Crown Jewel. Will It Be Spun Off Next?
- SeeNow.com: Put Your Friends In Compromising Positions
- Sayabit Turns Files Into Sharable Short URLs
- Web 2 Summit: Jonathan Miller Is Obsessed With Realtime, Won’t Talk Photobucket
- Google Chrome Themes Video Uses Some YouTube Magic To Make A Lasting Impression
| Ask.com Commercials Put Baby Seals In Jeopardy Posted: 23 Oct 2009 09:02 AM PDT The new Yahoo TV commercials may be content free nonsense, but at least they aren’t driving people to violence. I can’t say the same thing for the Ask.com campaign, which combines nonsense with a jingle that’s driving people crazy in a bad way. Just watch one, you’ll see what I mean. And if you really want to lose it, check out this site which plays the jingle on a never ending loop of insanity. And the saddest part is, Ask.com used to have really awesome (albeit sometimes completely sexist) commercials with stripper poles and women with swords. Some of my favorite Twitter comments on the ads: xGRANTxLEGACYx: “That ask.com commercial makes me want to club baby seals” ZombieRiot: “I went to Ask.com & asked “How can I kill everyone in your annoying new commercials?” kristy: “Uhm…just saw a commercial on TV for Ask.com. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA” cszmansky: “Terrible new Ask.com commercial: http://bit.ly/SKen1 Reminds me of Yahoo’s awful new campaign” KevSlider: “That ask.com commercial I just saw on TV was douche-chillingly bad. “Hey fellas who uses ask.com?” I DON’T I DON’T” steverechtman: “Ask.com’s new commercial is absolutely horrible.” ChurchesWife: “I just realized how sexist that ask.com commercial is. “Ladies, who wants a deal?” Examples are shoes and coupons. Guys get videogames.” MrAnthony: “I just saw the worst Ask.com commercial. I feel very embarrassed for them.” nuttyfruitcakes: “Is it me, or are those new ask.com commercials really fucking stupid?” Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.           |
| DigABand Empowers Independent Musicians To Boost Their Online Presence Posted: 23 Oct 2009 08:45 AM PDT  Emerging musicians and bands who are just starting their careers are often bootstrapped and don’t have the resources to pay for someone to create a website, book gigs online, and do web-based marketing to build a fan base. DigABand, which just launched in private beta, is hoping to help independent artists manage their online presence easily and through and single platform. DigABand, which targets artists with less than 1000 fans, serves as SaaS service that will empower bands and musicians to market themselves. Off of DigABand’s platform, you can create a customized site with a vanity URL, and can connect to social networks like Facebook and Twitter. And the pages where bans can set up their digital presence also include the ability to set up blogs and email accounts. The platform also leverages the greater community of artists by letting musicians connect with each other on the site to potentially collaborate for gigs and share a fan base. It’s kind of like Match.com for independent artists to make connections because the site can match them based on location, genre, number of fans, number of plays and so on. There are social networks out there that focus on connecting and helping collaboration for independent artists and bands such as Indaba but DigABand has a different take by allowing bands to actually create their online presence. Of course sites like MySpace and Facebook serve this purpose and have a built in database of fans, so the site will face stiff competition from these established social network. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| Video Hilarity: Windows 7 Launched On a MacBook Pro on NBC’s The Today Show Posted: 23 Oct 2009 08:43 AM PDT  Oh, dear. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was on The Today Show (international viewers: The Today Show is a morning news and entertainment program that airs on NBC, a big TV network here) to unveil Windows 7. Call me crazy, but isn't that a first-gen MacBook Pro in the background? Good job, NBC! Click through for video.   |
| The Ad-Supported World: Ready or Not, Here It Comes Posted: 23 Oct 2009 08:31 AM PDT  A few weeks ago, Microsoft made a minor splash by announcing they'd offer an ad-supported version of Microsoft Office. Most of the functionality would be there, but there'd be an ad down there in the corner. A tempest briefly raged in this teapot, but died down once people realized they'd been using ad-supported software for years and never even thought to complain. After all, every time you search for something — look, ads! Have a free email account? Ads here and there (targeted based on the content of your email, which surprisingly few people find disturbing), and sometimes even included in your outgoing messages. Ad-supported services and software are embedded in our technological landscape whether you realize it or not, and it's beyond question that they've cultivated improvement. So when word came down that Apple had filed a patent for what appears to be an ad-supported version of OS X, my shock abated almost instantly. In fact, I only felt more justified in backing ad-supported products. There will be objections, some legitimate, some hysterical, but I think it will become increasingly clear over the next few years that this sort of thing is not only unavoidable, but ultimately desirable. As with other major emerging concepts like globalization, peer to peer connectivity, net neutrality, and device convergence, the evolution of advertising will be denied, debated, and championed in a million different ways. And that's okay. Like those other processes (all of them still ongoing), you don't have to accept them right away, but it helps if you realize that resistance is futile.   |
| Single Currency Fails To Destroy Online Borders In Europe Posted: 23 Oct 2009 07:38 AM PDT  European shoppers looking to purchase products from other EU countries on the Web are likely to fail three times out of five, according to a European Commission study on cross-border consumer e-commerce, published yesterday. Such failures occur when an online retailer does not accept international payments or is simply not prepared to ship its products abroad. To research the phenomenon, the Commission carried out a 'mystery shopping' study where shoppers across the EU attempted to buy a list of 100 popular products, ranging from cameras to CDs, books and clothing - from a retailer in a different Member state. In total, over 11,000 test orders were carried out and what the study found was that no less than 60% of transactions could not be completed because of inadequate payment options or limited shipping abilities. Hence, the EC concludes that three out of five cross-border purchases fails, which it rightly identifies as a big problem.   |
| Kikin Personalizes Search By Tapping Into Your Social Graph Posted: 23 Oct 2009 06:30 AM PDT  This week brought news that Google and Microsoft are now incorporating Twitter into search results, solidifying the importance of incorporating social media content into search results. And startups like OneRiot have also recognized the value of tapping into the Twitter stream for search. Startup Kikin is doing the same with its newly launched plug-in. Once installed, Kikin will integrate content from social networks (like Facebook and Twitter) and other social sites (like Amazon, eBay and YouTube) alongside results from search engines (like Google, Bing and Yahoo!). So if you search for chocolate labs on Google, Kikin will provide a pane of YouTube videos of chocolate labs and a Twitter stream of mentions of chocolate labs. You can filter Twitter search results to just the Tweets from those users you are following. The pane also acts as a Twitter client where you can retweet Tweets and more. And the search results will tap into your Facebook account via Facebook Connect and search your news stream. Kikin lets you alter your settings so you can only see results from Twitter or YouTube. While Google, Bing and other search engine embrace social media content in their search results, I’m a fan of Kikin’s plug-in because it lets you moderate what content you want to see and which content isn’t useful to you. You may not be interested in results from eBay for your searched, which you can disable (of course, it will still show up in your Google results). And I like that Kikin accesses your Facebook stream and YouTube videos. And if you tire of Kikin’s results, you can easily minimize the pane. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.   |
| Infosys Co-founder Sells Part Of His Stake, Turns Venture Capitalist Posted: 23 Oct 2009 05:50 AM PDT
Nagavara Ramarao Narayana Murthy, better known as N. R. Narayana Murthy and one of the seven founders of Infosys Technologies – a giant of a consulting and IT services company based in India with over 100,000 employees and offices around the globe – is turning to “the dark side” after selling a bundle of company shares in order to set up a venture capital firm. To set up the fund, the man reportedly sold 800,000 shares, or 0.13% of the company, its total value converting to $38.7 million, more or less. According to many reports of Indian business and technology publications, Murthy aims to invest mainly in ‘brilliant’ Indian entrepreneurs who found startups that operate in the areas of healthcare, education and nutrition. Considering his background as a technology entrepreneur, I imagine some of the investments will be in technology or Internet companies as well, however. Infosys in a statement said overseas investments will also be consider on a “case-to-case basis”. Murthy started Infosys with six others back in 1981 by borrowing INR 10,000 (roughly $215 today) from his wife Sudha Murthy, and both still hold a significant part of the company today through a family holding. Infosys went public 12 years after its original founding and its share increased three thousandfold over the next 15 years or so. While the venture fund may seem small in size to most of our readers, $38 million can go a long way in India, so this is great news for local entrepreneurs and the ecosystem as a whole. (Thanks for the tip, Jason) Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| Judge Dismisses Ridiculous Craigslist Prostitution Lawsuit, Plaintiff Mulls Appeal Posted: 23 Oct 2009 04:52 AM PDT
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Dart (pictured) said he was disappointed with the verdict and is now considering an appeal. The legal battle Dart just lost was centered around Craigslist’s erotic services category (now dubbed Adult Services), which the Cook County sheriff alleged facilitated prostitution and constitutes a public nuisance. Federal District Court Judge John F. Grady threw out the lawsuit, which was filed in July 2009 and got Dart a lot of attention, in its entirety. The judge said that it was far from clear that Craigslist had actually encouraged its service to be used for advertising prostitutes, which was the core of Dart’s allegations. Grady added that Craiglist may even be able to claim protection under U.S. freedom of speech laws and the Communications Decency Act, which immunizes Internet intermediaries from civil liability for material posted by others. Dart has now reportedly “vowed not to give up” and seems determined to waste more valuable time and resources on this ridiculous case. We couldn’t have put it better than the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Matt Zimmerman, who wrote:
You might remember how South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster threatened similar legal action against Craigslist but ultimately got served nothing but humiliation when another federal judge blocked him from prosecuting Craigslist management, at least until he's made a final decision on the case. (Image via Huffington Post) Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   |
| Upgrading To Windows 7? Easily Install Multiple Software Programs With Ninite Posted: 23 Oct 2009 03:44 AM PDT
Wiping out your data is one thing, but you’ll also need to install all your applications from scratch again once you get Windows 7 up and running on your computer. The same goes, of course, for people who buy a new PC and start with only a few pre-installed programs – or none at all. Installing multiple software applications can be quite a painstaking, time-consuming chore, but a Y Combinator-funded startup has just pushed a tool that aims to make the process very, very easy. And free of charge on top of that. Meet Ninite, a multi-app installer tool that’s as useful as it is simple. Ninite has aggregated a bunch of popular PC applications in a range of categories on its website, and allows you to check multiple software programs and run the setup process for each of them in one go. No installation of additional software required, and Ninite will even automatically refrain from including toolbars and whatnot with the software you’ve opted to install. The only disadvantage I can see is actually a feature: default settings for software programs you’ve chosen to install will automatically be selected, so there’s little customization you can perform during the set-up process. Once you’ve selected all the apps you want, you’ll get a single executable file which will run all installations in one go while you go have an espresso. Ninite, which was called Volery while in private beta, is a product from Secure by Design, a YC-funded startup which discovered people were yearning for this type of tool when marketing the BaseShield App Store, essentially an app store for Windows apps. The company aims to make money off Ninite by offering premium features like local download caching, network share download caching and a silent mode to paying users. (Via Hacker News) Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.   |
| To Revitalize iPhone App Sales, Get T-Mobile And Dana Carvey To Pimp A Copycat Android App Posted: 23 Oct 2009 02:43 AM PDT Here’s a quirky story: Israeli iPhone app dev house ApParty released an app back in December 2008 called iFog (iTunes link). The premise being that the user selects a photo which then has a steam effect superimposed upon it. The steam can be wiped away by running a finger over the screen surface. Blowing on the iPhone microphone fogs the screen back up. Cute. Simple. And lucrative—it was bought 200,000 times for $0.99 a pop. As soon as it was released, iFog climbed the iPhone app charts, reaching the number one download spot in most European counties and even made it into the top 20 in the US version of the App Store. Since then—unsurprisingly—sales have flattened to a steady pace of about 250 per week. Until two weeks ago, where out of the blue iFog’s sales surged again and more than doubled. The two developers behind the app had no clue what the reason for this revitalization could possibly be. A couple of days ago, the mystery began to finally unravel. A friend of one of the developers who happens to live in Miami asked whether it was possible that she saw iFog on TV. Fat chance seeing as ‘Television Ads’ isn’t on any line in the company’s P&L. The friend was able to recall though that she saw the app in a new T-Mobile myTouch commercial (embedded below). Lo and behold, none other than Dana Carvey is seen with the same exact app, except it actually happens to be a knock-off made for Android. The ApParty guys added two and two together and realized that there was a spillover effect from the commercial, where iPhone owners that saw it rushed over to the App Store and found iFog. Go figure, huh? The T-Mobile commercial featuring Dana Carvey: Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.   |
| Full Circle In Sight As Inventor Of The World Wide Web Signs Up For Twitter Posted: 23 Oct 2009 02:10 AM PDT
The British computer scientist, engineer and MIT professor apparently got on Twitter yesterday just before he entered into a conversation with Tim O’Reilly on stage at the Web 2.0 Summit. The man uses Tweetie and thinks either the app or the Twitter website has a confusing user interface. Since Berners-Lee is also the Director of Web standards organization World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), that’s telling. (Hat tip to Tom Raftery) Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   |
| That Was Fun, But Now Nokia’s Looking To Sell Off Dopplr Posted: 23 Oct 2009 12:03 AM PDT
Whoa. What? The deal was announced on September 24. It’s been less than a month. Not even eBay throws away acquisitions that quickly. According to our source, all Nokia really wanted from the acquisition was the team, particularly CEO Marko Ahtisaari (formerly a star Nokia guy) and CTO Matt Biddulph. Suddenly, Mike Butcher’s article about the deal on TechCrunch Europe makes a lot of sense. They may actually want to keep the mobile stuff, too, which will be useful for future Nokia products. But the main Dopplr site is now up for grabs, from what we hear. So if you’re in the market for a really nice travel social network, give Nokia a call. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| Opera Mini Now Serving Over 500 Million Pageviews Per Day Posted: 22 Oct 2009 11:01 PM PDT  You hear that rumbling? That's the sound of mobile internet usage exploding. Sometime tomorrow, Opera will be releasing a couple of interesting usage statistics for what is one of the most popular browsers in the world, Opera Mini. They were nice enough to fill us in on the details a bit early, and to give us a green light to share them with you tonight.   |
| Hey Apple, Please Fix My Bricked iMac, Then Trash Microsoft Posted: 22 Oct 2009 07:03 PM PDT I upgraded three computers to Snow Leopard a couple of months ago, and one of them, a newish iMac, is still a brick. So even though I’m a loyal Mac user (just not the iPhone any more), it still pisses me off to see them trashing Windows 7 in a new Mac v. PC commercial. Windows 7 looks like a very solid operating system. It might even work just fine on that iMac. So give it a rest already, Apple. (via Erictric) Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| Mozilla’s Raindrop Looks To Make Your Inbox Personal Again Posted: 22 Oct 2009 04:36 PM PDT  Mozilla Labs, Mozilla’s innovation group, has developed a new open-source, experimental email and communication platform called Raindrop. Mozilla says that Raindrop was built to be focused on highlighting and breaking out personal conversations, making it easier for you to see all of your conversations in one client. It is designed to “bubble up” the important conversations from your messages According to the site, Raindrop “is an effort that starts by trying to understand today's web of conversations, and aims to design an interface that helps people get a handle on their digital world.” Still in prototype form, the platform is very young but it aims categorize messages and then separate the personal messages from bulk messages, so you know what to respond to vs. just noting a communication. So Raindrop will import all of your email, but break out your personalized email from your mailing list emails and will portray the personal emails higher on the page. Raindrop will also separate direct messages and @replies from your stream, acting like a Twitter client And you’ll be able to Tweet from the platform and pull in RSS feeds. I briefly spoke with one of Raindrop’s lead engineer’s and the CEO of Mozilla Messaging, David Ascher, who told me that in the future iterations the platform should include all types of messaging, including IM, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube and basically, any communication with an open API. And according to the site, content with in communications, such as links from YouTube or Flickr should be shown near or as part of the message, rather than in a separate tab. Ascher said that Raindrop doesn’t really aim to replace your Gmail account but add to it with an intelligent way to understand your communications. The application works on Firefox, Safari and Chrome. Mozilla also wants to developers to build applications off of Raindrop and is releasing its API to help users customize their communications experiences. The back-end of the platform is a non-relational database (CouchDB) which was optimized for massive web interactions. The front-end, says Ascher, uses high-powered JavaScript libraries, modern CSS to give your best browser with the platform. Ascher told me that Raindrop is still very, very early stage but the platform will continue to evolve with time. It takes page from social media messaging aggregation services like FriendFeed but with a strong focus in filtering. It will be interesting to see what two-way interactions the platform will feature and what content it eventually will bring in. Because its a modern communication system, it could compete with open communications platform Google Wave. If you’re confused, take a look at the video. It explains the purpose of Raindrop pretty well.
Raindrop UX Design and Demo from Mozilla Messaging on Vimeo. Full disclosure: My husband works for the Mozilla Corp. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   |
| Sean Parker: Twitter/Facebook Will Soon Dominate The Web — Not Google. Posted: 22 Oct 2009 04:12 PM PDT
Why? Parker believes we’re shifting from the first phase of the Internet, which was dominated by what he calls “information services” These are companies like Google and Yahoo. But next up to dominate the web will be the “network services” like Facebook and Twitter, he believes. To be clear, he thinks Google will stay huge and relevant, but it’s dominance will go down because collecting data is less valuable than connecting people, he said. He went on to talk a bit about the social networking space, which is significant because he helped found Facebook. Parker noted that data portability is a red herring. Data portability is easily solved by converters and adapters, he said. Facebook has of course been criticized for being much more closed with regards to its data than many of the other social networks. In Parker’s view, it would seem that not only is this not a bad thing, but it will help them dominate, because it will force other users to join them. That’s something that I would bet a lot of people believe, but it’s interesting to hear someone like Parker be ballsy enough to say that. He went on to say that Friendster was not a fad, it failed because of the failure to scale, not because of poor product execution. So how did MySpace fall? It was a “systematic product failure,” said Parker. And Facebook was smart to launch with the college campus networks. “College students didn’t have MySpace accounts, so we went for them,” Parker said. It was all about tightly spun networks at colleges, and that helped Facebook spread naturally and virally. Parker also talked a bit about why it’s not always the best products that win. Craigslist, MySpace, AIM and eBay all were poorly designed or executed, yet they did well. This was because their networks were strong enough to overcome their bad products, Parker said. Also of note was that one of Parker’s slides talked about the few networks Google does own, like Orkut. That slide seemed to imply that Foursquare is owned by Google, which of course is not true. Google did buy Foursquare co-founder’s Dennis Crowley’s former location company, Dodgeball, but they have since killed it. So in Parker’s view, Google is actually weaker than he thinks. Update: Parker has written to let us know that he did, in fact, mean Dodgeball rather than Foursquare. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   |
| Web 2 Summit: Tim Armstrong On AOL Spin Off, Content, And A Mysterious New Tech Posted: 22 Oct 2009 03:02 PM PDT
The Armstrong talk can be summarized pretty easily: Content, content, content. Armstrong made it very clear that not only is AOL in the process of spinning off into its own public company, but that they are now going to be a content company. In fact, they’ve gone from 500 journalists to over 3,000 since he took over, he said. And that will keep growing. The idea is to grow AOL’s unique visitors and then figure out the best way to monetize it. But again, growth, will be the key. He’s not sure if 2010 will see that significant growth, but after that, he expects they’ll be going in the right way. Notably, Armstrong also hinted at some new technology that AOL has been working on for the past 3 months now. When pressed, he would not say what it is, but said that they will be talking about it at a later date. Mysterious. Armstrong says he took the AOL job partially because it was a risk. And he noted that if you’re not working in the Internet industry to take risks, you shouldn’t be in it. “If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough,” he said. Below find the full Q&A (paraphrased): JB: You and Sergey dress a bit differently. TA: This is his tie (laughs). JB: Why take the AOL CEO job? You had other options, like a sandy beach. TA: I wasn’t thinking about leaving (Google) but the AOL thing came up. I’m a big believer that this is just the beginning for the Internet. AOL has a lot of things that people don’t realize. It’s undervalued. Google was a great experience, but I wanted to learn again. I have on this job in the first 6 months already. And the company was ready to change. JB: Would you have taken the job if you knew you couldn’t spin it out from Time Warner? TA: That’s not true. But it does make sense to spin it out. JB: It hasn’t happened but it will right? TA: Yeah that’s the intention. JB: How does one do that? Take it public, private? TA: If you own Time Warner stock, you will get a share of whatever AOL is. It’s like the Time Warner cable offering. So you can buy a share of AOL too soon. JB: Is the company ready for that? TA: Everyone has worked really hard. Still more work to do. We need to prepare to go public, so we have to do investor relations and taxes, etc. We’re in a good position, working towards it. JB: How profitability and rev growth? TA: Well that’s the tricky part. (laughs) The company is very profitable. Most of it is paid services, very small is from dial-up. We’re very focused in growing a large platform around content now. That’s the hard work to get down. The rev 2010 for us will see the content coming up. JB: Lot of AOL brands now, TMZ, women’s brands, etc. Will this be more of that? TA: We have some secret sauce that I can’t announce. But we’ve been working on something for 3 months that’s a big tech shift. I can talk about it later. JB: Wait, tell me more. What tech? TA: It’s a broader platform with more information about content, and around content. I can’t give you a better answer. We’ve gone from 500 journalists to over 3,000. We’re going to keep growing. Our content is 80% our own, we’re going to keep going. It’s all about taking content management serious. There’s an opportunity there. JB: Will AOL start acquiring again? TA: Yeah the AOL/Yahoo deal that almost happened really set us back. Now we’ve flipped it, we’re not living in fear. We will acquire other companies again. I’m not sure who yet. Our money is going to the product right now, period. JB: Talk to me about Twitter, all we’ve heard the past few days. Do you want to integrate Twitter? TA: Yeah we’re interested in bringing in stuff like that. We have lifestreaming now, we do see that as a part of our future. Brad Garlinghouse’s mandate is ‘how do we take messaging to the next level?’ I’m a bit fan of Twitter, they’ve made it impactful. We’d be happy to use it in some way. JB: What about Bing? TA: I think they did a good job with Bing. They’re getting worthy attention. I was surprised. JB: Can content-bases strategies scale? Content businesses don’t seem to get all the love that tech companies do. TA: I don’t know what our valuation will be but people in the media business look at Silicon Valley companies with envy. We have the opposite view. Let’s take some tech and be serious about it, around our content. JB: But how do you scale? TA: I can’t tell you that! (Yet) I’ll use the television example. When you see the TV channels, look at the depth of content with 300 channels. It could be better. The distribution has massively changed with the Internet. JB: The deal with Google, let’s talk about that. Is Google going to get a new search deal with you? TA: AOL is not in the search business. We’re not in a rush to get a new deal done. We’re patiently working to get something done. Google has been a great partner. Google has a leg up on the relationship side, but in my AOL hat I need to make sure we get the right deal. JB: What about Yahoo not being a search company anymore, like what AOL did a while ago? Did you agree with Sergey that Yahoo should have stayed going it alone? TA: No, but I wasn’t as concerned as he was about it. Yahoo had to do what it had to do. It’s a tough market. Did I think we’d be major search partners with Yahoo? No. Now they’re getting out. JB: What are the metrics how you judge where you are now and down the road? TA: When I got there, pageviews were the main metric. I still am looking at that, more uniques, etc. We need to get to new areas of innovation too. Looking at user interest, etc. It may be tough in 2010, but post 2010, how do we get shareholder value? I think it comes from consumer value. I want to see large growth. Then we’ll figure out how to monetize those. JB: What are they now? TA: 270 million globally, 100 million in the U.S. but we’re changing things (unique visitors). 2010 should start showing things, but we may drop a bit at first, then we should see growth after that. Audience Q&A Q: What’s the vision for Patch? And what about Yellowpage revenue? TA: Patch is in about 10 towns, it’s being tested. We’re trying to digitize towns. But all that town’s information online. The vision is that this is a business, but this could be good for the world. This is a core area we can innovate in. We’re excited about that area. I think in the future the Yellowpage business will be much, much better than it is today. A lot of companies out there are working on it. And Patch will help. Q: Talk about email and ICQ. TA: We’ve have: content, ads, and communications. What you’re talking about is the last bucket. People ask why isn’t AIM a billion dollar business? For us, that’s about the community. Q: 500 to 3,000 journalists? Holy cow, how’d you do that? TA: Mainly it’s been hiring and getting free-lance people on payroll. We have come up with a content strategy that fragmentation is our friend. We started to quickly add content when we see successful ideas. We’re doing over 3,000 pieces of content a day online, and much more than that soon. We’re also now doing 3-4 times the amount of video we were doing a few months ago. This is a way for us to build a community. We’ve been hiring big names from ESPN and WSJ. For journalism, you’re not just hiring the person, you’re hiring their community too. Q: What about using new devices? TA: There’s some interesting stuff from a device perspective. But we’re just thinking about the users now, no matter what they use. Mobile will be even more important in the future. I’m agnostic towards the devices though. Q: So will mobile be it’s own interface? TA: I don’t know. JB: What about Google going into content? TA: I know Google gets criticized a lot for going into new areas, but they keep ahead of the curves. They’re very good at that. It makes sense to test things, even if they don’t work out. It’s more than just sitting around the room and thinking about it. “If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough.” AOL used to take no risks, now we’re changing that. Bebo is a great product, we’ve pulled it back out and are trying to do it as its own product again. Shame on us for trying to integrate it to all this other stuff. I came to AOL because it’s a risk. If you’re not ready for that, the Internet isn’t for you. That’s a wrap. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| MySpace’s Jason Hirschhorn Gets Off On Killing Products Posted: 22 Oct 2009 02:50 PM PDT
And boy they sure have killed off a lot of products. CEO Owen Van Natta mentioned the execution of Classifieds, Jobs and Weather yesterday on stage. We’ve confirmed that Books, Horoscopes, News, Calendars and Polls are also on the chopping block. A total of ten or so products will be flatlined when they’re done with the executions. It’s clear that MySpace wants to juggle fewer balls. And products that don’t fit the “socialization of content” mantra had better sleep with one eye open. Hirschhorn is coming after them. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.   |
| Excitement For Hardware Keeps Sergey Brin Up At Night. And Maybe Chrome For Mac Too. Posted: 22 Oct 2009 02:45 PM PDT
Of note, Brin said that he’s excited about Twitter’s success because it’s interesting for him to see entrepreneurs that succeed twice. Twitter co-founder Evan Williams first big break came when he sold Blogger to Google in 2003. It reaffirms the difference a good entrepreneur can make, Brin said. When asked if he had anything to do with the Google/Twitter search deal yesterday, Brin said he was aware of it but wasn’t personally involved. He also noted that he hasn’t attempted to buy Twitter in the past, though it’s not clear if that just meant him or anyone at Google. He went on to say that Google talks to a lot of companies about partnerships and the idea to buy is always one of the options. Battelle asked Brin to comment on whether Google would eventually make its own phone hardware. Brin said that was a better question for Andy Rubin (Google’s Android head) but noted that Google has worked closely with a number of phone makers since the G1 to closely tie the software to the hardware, which he believes is important. Speaking of hardware, Brin said that is an area that keeps him up at night with excitement. He loves the pace of innovation and is always thinking about what Google can do with new and faster devices. On Bing, Brin noted that he uses all the search engines (presumably to test them out against Google). He said that he thinks it’s good that Microsoft is bringing stronger competition in the market. He also expressed disappointment about Yahoo and Microsoft’s search deal. He wishes Yahoo would continue to go it alone. Finally, someone asked him where Chrome for Mac is — a topic near and dear to our hearts. Brin says that he’s already using it, the unstable developer’s version. He said that it’s personally troublesome to him that it has taken this long to get it out. He wishes they could have launched it at the same time, and really wishes they had a beta out already. Below find the Q&A (paraphrased): JB: So you got to chat with Tim Armstrong. Do you miss him? SB: Oh yeah it’s great to see him here. We miss him a lot. But it’s great for AOL to have a leader like him. JB: So yesterday the Twitter deal, how did that go down? SB: I was aware of it, but not personally. It’s exciting to see an entrepreneur be successful twice. Blogger was great, and I got to work with Ev for a while obviously. It reaffirmed the difference an entrepreneur can make. It’s nice to see him be successful. We have quite the alumni community, which is great for partnerships and trust. JB: Did you try to buy Twitter. SB: Um, I did not try to buy Twitter. But when companies approach us, we consider the opportunity to buy. JB: We talked to Sheryl Sandberg yesterday, another alum. What’s Google’s response to Facebook and Twitter? SB: I would dispute that Google dominates the economy of attention. From the beginning, it’s just about coming on and doing a search and find these other websites. The web has grown, but people don’t spend all the attention in the search box. JB: But you can make money there. SB: When we started, you couldn’t make any money there though. But we made a bet that this would be important. It took several years to make what is now something that’s very lucrative. There will be others that we don’t realize now. JB: What about the push into premium display ads? SB: I can’t forecast what it will be. But at a high level, the Internet as an ad platform is efficient. It’s a rising tide, rates will go up. JB: Google has been criticized for doing too many thing. Boiling a lot of oceans, mobile, search, ads, etc. Can you succeed in all of them? Do you want to bat .350? SB: I don’t know baseball, is that like 35%? I think we can do better than that.We started Gmail, it was a pain to deal with email. There were client solutions, but none were that great. The web offerings were toys basically. With Android, we were trying to use other platforms, but they were closed, different, etc. JB: Will there be a Google hardware device for Android? SB: I’ll leave that for Andy Rubin. But we have been very involved. Ever since the G1. We want to work closely with a few at any time. You can’t make software totally divorced from the hardware. JB: Do you like Bing? You a Bing user? SB: I use all search engines out there. Bing reminds us that search is a competitive market. There’s Powerset that Microsoft bought. There’s Cuil. There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on. It’s a shame Yahoo is abdicating. JB: They would say they’re not. SB: Sorry that was my impression. JB: Do you have a comment on Microsoft/Yahoo search deal? SB: I shouldn’t comment on that. But Yahoo had some interesting things, they should stick with it. Audience Q&A Q: What keeps you up at night? SB: There are things that keep me excited at night. Primarily hardware. Moore’s law still continuing is amazing. 8 core processors, 2 terabyte hard drives, it’s incredible. Fiber optics too. Google looks at what we can do with this new powerful technology that we couldn’t do before. JB: What do you make of the recent complaints about Google not paying their fair share to places like the AP and Rupert Murdoch? SB: I think they’re just tying Google with change. The world is changing, the business models are changing. They’re making a leap that we’re causing that or we’re stealing from them, I think. I don’t agree with the conclusion, but I hear the pain. Q: Where’s Chrome For Mac? SB: I am using it. Anyone can. You have to go to a page that says you shouldn’t use it, but you should. To be fair, it’s not as stable as I’d like it to be. The timing has been an issue. I’d be much happier if we launched at the same time or had a beta now. We are all suffering from this. I do use it a lot now, but it’s somewhat unreliable. Q: Give a 2 years or 3 years out vision of what Google Books will be? SB: Yeah thanks for that question. I’ve been surprised about the controversy there. We want to make books available on a huge scale. We overcame tech challenges. We had to overcome the legal dispute, which we’re working on. These books have great content, even if they’re 50 years old. People need to access them and we need to pay them for that, we know that. I’m surprised by the resistance. But I’m optimistic that we’ll be successful and that we’ll provide access to tens of millions of books. That’s a wrap Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.   |
| The New CNN.com (First Screenshots) Posted: 22 Oct 2009 02:41 PM PDT
Jim walton, President of CNN Worldwide, kicked off the presentation by talking about how the last time he had taken the stage, it was during CNN’s annual all-hands meeting in January, when he kept receiving questions about layoffs. He recounted that he had said “if we have significant layoffs, I will sit on this stage, and allow all of you to throw tomatoes at me.” going on to say that today, “nobody is going to be throwing tomatoes. He said that CNN had increased its profits year over year, and that it would be ending the year with more journalists than it started with. The presentation then launched into a slideshow of past CNN designs, beginning with the site’s original launch in 1995. Then Kenneth "KC" Estenson, Senior Vice President and General Manager of CNN.com took the stage to talk about the site’s traffic: CNN.com has 38 million unique visitors every month, 1.7 billion page views, and 100 million video views. 121 Billion total page views all time. Estenson says there are two reasons to change CNN.com: the site wants to constantly move forward, and it wants to help expose the wealth of content that exists beyond what sits on the homepage. The site wants to emphasize breaking news, and more video, as well as perspective and analysis, and keep it easy to use. The new site will go live on Monday.  There will be a new Entertainment portal, which will include a new partnership from Entertainment Weekly and People Magazine.  Article pages have been redesigned: The site also has a more prominent opinion portal, including pieces by David Frum who is a new contributor: CNN.com is also partnering with TED, and will now feature TED’s talks, which include presentations from some of the world’s most notable scientists, artists, and more.  iReport will now be more deeply integrated into CNN’s homepage. New product called NewsPulse “very early, launching in Beta”. “An iTunes for news” — a listing of all the articles inside of CNN, and you can go in and sort them by popularity, sort my content and categories. Watch video inline.  Launching new quiz called CNN Challenge. Flash-based interactive quiz show every week to test your knowledge of recent news/events. Earlier this year the site did a collaboration with Facebook to do live feed with Facebook stream. Did it again for the Michael Jackson memorial. During inauguration, had 27 million video views (largest live video event ever). Next month they’re doing it again — on Nov. 9th, CNN and Facebook are adding Oprah. At 9 PM that night Oprah will be hosting a book club on CNN.com, with Facebook chat to bring these three brands together. Oprah will be announcing this tomorrow at 9AM on her show. CNN’s last major redesign was back in 2007, when the site integrated a much broader selection of multimedia content (streamed through a more friendly Flash media player) as well as more ‘Web 2.0′ social features. For more of CNN’s past designs, check out its archive at the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
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| PayPal Continues To Be eBay’s Crown Jewel. Will It Be Spun Off Next? Posted: 22 Oct 2009 02:18 PM PDT Yesterday, eBay’s third-quarter results were bitter sweet, with profits declining 29 percent from the same quarter last year. But year-over-year revenue increased for the first time in the past year, thanks in part of strong results posted by PayPal (and Skype). The payments processor saw its revenue rise to $668.1 million, up 15 percent compared to last year, and the number of active registered accounts grew by nearly 20 percent in the quarter to 78 million. What is notable is that the number of online merchants using PayPal separately from eBay continues to rise, with the external use now at 56% of total volume, up from 51% last year. And the company has stated that 44 of the top 100 U.S. retailers offer PayPal as a payment option. Added to the mix of PayPal’s steady success is the company’s strategy of opening up its platform to developers to fuel even more viral growth outside of eBay’s own platform. PayPal recently announced its Adaptive Payments API, which gives developers full and open access to PayPal's payment processing features, allowing them a lot more freedom in building applications which incorporate PayPal, which includes the ability to accept and distribute payments. Paypal's Adaptive Payments has built-in micropayments support, and also offers "Chained Payments," which lets developers create applications that enable a sender to send a single payment to a primary receiver who may keep part of the payment and pay other, secondary receivers with the remainder of the funds. For example, an application might be an online travel agency that handles bookings for airfare, hotel reservations, and car rentals. The sender sees only the travel site as the primary receiver. But that site could allocate the payment for its commission and the actual cost of services provided by other merchants. PayPal would deduct the money from the sender's account and deposit it in both the primary travel site's account and the secondary receivers' accounts. It sounds complicated but in execution it’s much simpler and fairly innovative. Adaptive Payments will also offer "Parallel Payments," which would let a sender send a single payment to multiple receivers. An example of this type of application might be a shopping cart that lets a buyer pay for items from several merchants with one payment. The shopping cart would allocate the payment to the merchants who actually provided the items. PayPal would then deduct money from the sender's account and deposits it in the receivers' accounts. FundRazr, Lottay, TwitPay and Payvment, which helps set up e-commerce retail stores on Facebook, are both using this API to power their applications. And PayPal’s APIs aren’t just getting attention from startups; some of the biggest players in technology are investing resources in the API. Microsoft cloud computing platform Azure are utilizing Adaptive Payments to let developers who are building applications using PayPal seamless integrate their applications with Azure's platform. Microsoft is working with PayPal to help developers easily embed billing and payment functionality into applications built off Azure and will offer interoperability between Azure and Adaptive Payments. At the Web 2.0 summit yesterday, PayPal president Scott Thompson, said that the company is working with consumer tech companies, mobile device manufacturers, and software companies to incorporate the new APIs in applications. Thompson also emphasized that PayPal has international ambitions, with hopes that the API will be used across the world in various currencies (currently PayPal transactions can be conducted in 19 currencies). The ambition, which is articulated well in this futuristic video, is for consumers to be able to make a payment from any device, whether that be a TV, mobile device, or computer (it’s sort of similar to Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie’s three screens strategy). Thompson added that a dozens of additional APIs will be released in the coming year, creating an unprecedented open platform for online payments development. So where does PayPal’s primary competitor Amazon, fit into the mix? Amazon’s fledgling Flexible Payments API is similar in theory to PayPal’s Adaptive Payments API and offers some of the same functionality. But PayPal’s platform is being marketed very aggressively to both developers and the greater tech community, with the company even throwing a conference around the public release of the API. PayPal appears to be evangelizing its API everywhere, publicly campaigning that the payments platform will change how consumers will pay in the future. There’s been some rumors about eBay possibly spinning off PayPal, thanks to PayPal’s continued strength in the marketplace. Donahoe “regularly asks himself whether eBay is hampering PayPal’s development,” Bloomberg reports, via the NY Post. “When I feel the business will be better off separately, we’ll do what we did with Skype,” he said. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| SeeNow.com: Put Your Friends In Compromising Positions Posted: 22 Oct 2009 12:38 PM PDT  SeeNow is a cute website that allows you to create those old timey "face-in-hole" pictures so popular at county fairs, hay rides, and correctional facilities. The concept is simple: you upload, link to, or take a picture of your face and then put it into a series of clever situations or onto the faces of popular celebrities. Step 4? Profit!   |
| Sayabit Turns Files Into Sharable Short URLs Posted: 22 Oct 2009 12:23 PM PDT There plenty of ways to share files over the Internet (I like Drop.io or Skype). But when you want to share something with the world, or a larger group of friends, the place to do that increasingly is on Twitter or Facebook. Today a new file-sharing service called Sayabit launched which turns your files into short URLs which can be passed around more easily. If the file is an image, then the Sayabit link (like http://sayabit.com/LV9llB) takes you to a Webpage where the image is hosted, just like TwitPic. But if it is another kind of file, it just starts downloading right away (this will soon be changed to also first take you to a landing page.) Already, there is lots of competition among Twitter file-sharing services. (See TwitDoc, FileTwt, Tweetcube). Sayabit, however, also offers password-protected links so that you can control who you are sharing with a little bit better. And it gives you charts and graphs showing you how many times your file has been clicked on. Sayabit is the first product to come out of Sayagle, a startup in Cambridge, Mass. which is working on a broader product portfolio. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/08/16-apps-that-make-sharing-large-files-a-snap/ Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   |
| Web 2 Summit: Jonathan Miller Is Obsessed With Realtime, Won’t Talk Photobucket Posted: 22 Oct 2009 11:27 AM PDT
Miller reiterated some of what MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta said yesterday at the conference. They have a plan to move forward focusing on what they believe they’re good at, socializing content, which will be music-heavy thanks to their deals with the music labels. In the audience question part at the end, TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington got up to ask Miller specifically about the sale of Photobucket, which we first reported on, but News Corp. has yet to confirm. Miller laughed, but said “No, I can’t make that announcement here.” That of course implies that they will make the announcement at some point. Miller acknowledged that Photobucket is right in the middle of an important business decision for News Corp.: Are some of their assets stand-alone products, or part of the bigger picture? “It will be resolved shortly, but not today,” Miller said. From what we’ve heard, MySpace is going to sell Photobucket to Ontela for a deal valued at $60 million, which is a huge markdown from the $250 million (plus a $50 million earn-out) that MySpace paid for the company in 2007. Below find my live notes from the Q&A (paraphrased): JB: What do you make of this whole rodeo around Twitter? JM: I think it’s great. Search had been out of the socialization of the web thing, now it’s in it. It’s also clear that we have a lot of competition. It’s great. It’s not a one-horse race. Microsoft is hanging in there (in search). JB: What’s it like to work with Rupert Murdoch? JM: It’s fascinating. He’s so curious. He wants to know everything about everything. No matter what it is. He retains his ambition. He’s as ambitious as anyone I’ve ever met. JB: What’s your job? What does it involve? JM: I’m Chairman and CEO of the Digital Media group. I do two things really: One, I’m the executive in charge of a lot of businesses like MySpace. The other role is to provide strategy and guidance for the entire corporation. JB: How do you split your time between those two? Thoughts on all this media stuff? JM: Rupert feels there needs to be a paid content model – that doesn’t mean there won’t be free as well, but that’s our stance. There will be free and paid, but there will be paid. I spend half my time in that world trying to figure it out. JB: It is just a pay wall? JM: That’s a hard way to do it. You have to offer value to the users. It has to be different from the free area. It’s not just throwing a pay wall. Wall Street Journal is working with that model. You can walk and chew gum at the same time. JB: So that works for the WSJ, but they have a fat wallet audience. JM: Well I think they offer value. JB: Why leave what you were doing? JM: I was having a good time and we were investing in a few key areas. One big one was online video. That was fun and focused. But I was given the opportunity to work on a larger scale with more difficulty. I’m a glutten for punishment. JB: The idea was that you were going to have to “fix MySpace,” right? Owen was here yesterday laying out the plan. How is it going? How do you know it’s working? JM: Fix isn’t the right word. Nothing was broken that we’re putting it back. You have to think ahead. I don’t want to be in the catch up game. We need to get the essence of what MySpace is. It’s about making contacts, we’re getting back to that. The social part. Look at the big picture, then focus it down. Music announcements are core. There was some stuff that needed to be fixed. You need to stablize loss of traffic. It’s been a combination of organic loss of traffic and cleaning up the service. We’re stablizing it, but it’s not the fix game. We need to do new and different. JB: Rupert got a lot of credit for making that investment at the time. Is he upset for how it has gone? JM: You know you have to keep moving forward. But MySpace didn’t keep going. There have been competitiors in the general space, Facebook and Twitter that came along. We’re upset that we didn’t keep going. It’s hard to regain momentum. JB: Is Twitter overhyped? JM: It’s fascinating. I didn’t think it would have been what it is now. But the question is: Where does it go? They’re smart to be an open platform. The money question is easier, I think. Their new deals are interesting, but it doesn’t take you to a billion valuation. Are you your own thing or are you a sub-category of what Facebook is doing? That’s the question. JB: Is News Corp. a buyer in this space right now? JM: We did just buy iLike. It’s strategic. We’re not just trying to go after cool businesses, it has to be about our strategy. That’s a music focus with iLike. We’re not just investing. JB: What are the key strategies? JM: Generally I’m obsessed with realtime. I have been for a long time, even when I was with AOL. I didn’t know it back then, but now you can really see it. Twitter is one level, but it’s beyond that. Another interest is global. I just returned from Asia – it was really eye-opening. As we heard from Mary Meeker, the mobile world over there is amazing. They have things over there that compete with the iPhone. The mobile Internet is huge over there. We’re actually behind over here. It’s a huge transformation. For MySpace music and games. It needs to start with an “M” a “G” or an “E”. We need to open our platform more with MySpace, like Twitter is doing. JB: Talk about FAN (Fox Audience Network). JM: Most people in the audience would know the biggest ad networks, but not the #5 one, which is us. We’re moving up. We want to be #4. A deal with Omnicom helps us big time. It’s a real-time bidding network, advertisers can buy directly in to this huge network. They can buy a huge audience. It’s giving that power over to the buy side. It’s the beginning of a coming out part for FAN. Display advertising is coming. JB: In display publishers feel threatened right? You can reach through the brand and grab an audience. Is that a problem? JM: Yep. I think it’s a real change. There will be a premium world that will command high CPMs. Hulu can do that. It’s a true premium buy and a great expereience. Then there is the cheap inventory that can go to a broad audience. I think FAN can help with that. But the middle will get squeezed. You have to be premium or bulk. It’s hard in the middle. JB: FAN is an exchange network right? JM: Yeah directionally exchange. JB: How’s it different from what’s out there. JM: Along with a move to display, it’s a move to exchange. FAN uses the social networking environment. People tell you stuff freely through these networks. We’re not doing profiles, but it’s audience, to be clear. JB: So if I declare what I’m interested in on MySpace, but then I go to another FAN network, and I see an ad for what I’m interested in. JM: You can spread that across the web. JB: Let’s go back in time a bit. As the former CEO of AOL, the new CEO TIm Armstrong – what should I ask him? JM: That’s a good one. I’m thrilled he’s there. They need to get their freedom. I know they’re on track, but are they really. The freedom from Time Warner. That’s #1. It’s mutually felt, both want it. Is it on track. Number two is how does the new content focus scale? Can you make enough of it in the model they have. The portal-based model. The third, what’s happening in ad sales? Revenue is kind of important and AOL has a declining revenue and subscription base. So you need accelerating ads. It’s so key to that company. Audience Q&A Q: Is there a big opportunity for brands to do new things with all these social networking communities and sites? JM: Absolutely. That’s what AOL has been doing with TMZ, leveraging the AOL platform. We need to start new brands, not just extend networks. Q: Is authentication big? JM: Yes, it’s a big thing. Q: (From Mike) Did you sell Photobucket? JM: (Laughs). I’m confident that is Mike Arrington. No I can’t make that announcement here. But look, we’re going over all our assets, is it a stand-alone or does it fit? Photobucket is right in the middle of that. It will be resolved shortly, but not today. Q: Talk about MySpace versus Facebook and Twitter. JM: Twitter is about the assymettic relationship. Facebook is symmetric. MySpace is in between. We’ve had both in our history. We need to declare a major. Facebook is trying to be everything it seems. We’re more about interests of our users going forward, more than just the friend thing. I think we’re closer to Twitter. But we can be richer, I think. I don’t know if Twitter with change, but that’s how it is today. Q: Talk about copyrights. JM: We need to have copyrights that are expected. Even in China they realize that. They have a budding content industry too. They’re very interested in copyright and piracy. I think we’ll have an Internet that respects copyright. That’s a wrap. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   |
| Google Chrome Themes Video Uses Some YouTube Magic To Make A Lasting Impression Posted: 22 Oct 2009 10:50 AM PDT Back in August Google rolled out a collections of themes for its Chrome browser, giving users the chance to swap the browser’s blue-hued palette in favor of something a bit more colorful. Earlier this month it took things one step further, bringing onboard style icons like Dolce & Gabbana, Kate Spade, and Oscar de la Renta to design their own themes for the gallery. And today, it’s released a new video to promote these themes to the masses, using some YouTube trickery to leave a lasting impression. You can check out the video here. Make sure to watch til the end. Chrome Themes are comparable to Firefox’s Personas, which were released by Mozilla Labs back in March, though Personas has a larger array of themes available in its directory.  Spoiler warning: This isn’t the first video to use such trickery on YouTube (you’ll notice the entire page is a Flash embed). Remember this Wario Land ad by Nintendo? Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   |
Great news for Indian entrepreneurs!
Thomas Dart, the Illinois sheriff who took 
Now that Windows 7 is being met with mostly positive reviews and green-lighting by software professionals, no doubt many will be making the switch to Microsoft’s new operating system in the next couple of weeks. Which is a 
Sir Timothy John 
The damn ink isn’t even dry on the 
At the Web 2.0 Summit today in San Francisco AOL’s chairman and CEO 
Overheard at the Web 2.0 Summit: “A couple of months ago [MySpace CPO] 
Google co-founder 
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