The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Harvard Medical School Launches Swine Flu iPhone App
- OWLE Launches Bubo; Ultimate iPhone Video Rig
- Sequoia, Angel Investors Back Game Developer Unity Technologies With $5.5 Million
- Shoppers To Spend $400 Million On eBay This Year … Using Its iPhone App
- Yahoo Mail Suffers Outage
- Facebook Hires Journalist Andrew Noyes To Increase Leverage In Washington
- Study Reveals More Details About The iPhone Mom
- Twitter Costs British Economy $2.25 Billion A Year, And Other Nonsense
- Constant Contact Enters The Online Event Registration And Marketing Arena
- Social Games: How The Big Three Make Millions
- The Problem With iPhone Killers…
- Join The TechCrunch Japan TokyoCamp on November 6
- Salesforce And Adobe Partner To Offer Flash-Based Applications In The Cloud
- Tonight, You Too Can Watch U2 On YouTube, Live
- LawCrunch: Some (More) Ideas On Why Nokia Sued Apple
- NASDAQ Launches A Slick iPhone App Highlighting Tweets From StockTwits
- TaffyBox Combines BitTorrent Search And Web Download
- Just How Big Is TweetMeme Anyway, And Why Does It Matter?
- CrunchGear Week in Review: By Cell Light Edition
| Harvard Medical School Launches Swine Flu iPhone App Posted: 26 Oct 2009 09:07 AM PDT As the threat of the swine flu (otherwise known as H1N1) pandemic become more serious and President Obama declares a national emergency over the rapidly spreading virus, Harvard Medical School is hoping to help educate people with its new iPhone app. The Swine Flu app, which is currently available on the app store, costs $1.99. The Swine Flu Application includes videos, animations and text that allow you to learn the basics about swine flu, how to reduce the risk to you and your family, and how to prepare your business for the pandemic. The app also features real-time updates and news from Harvard Med School about H1N1. To let users determine how close outbreaks are to their location, the app has a "HealthMap” feature that lets you know about the state of the epidemic in your current location and other locations. For those uses who are feeling sick but unsure if it is attributed to H1N1, the app has an interactive symptom checker that helps you decide if your symptoms, or your child's symptoms indicate swine flu, and when it is wise to contact your doctor. And the app includes hotlines and numbers to call (based on the user’s location) in case of an emergency or for more information about H1N1. The app also includes a section devoted to helping businesses educate employees about the pandemic and includes guides on how to prepare a business to deal with the flu. There are other apps that provide similar services, such as the Swine Flu Tracker by IntuApps, but none have the backing of one of the foremost medical institutions in the world. The Swine Flu App is part of Harvard Medical School’s greater mobile strategy, called HMS Mobile, which aims to deliver a series of iPhone Applications aimed at promoting public health. It’s not a bad idea, especially considering that Harvard is monetizing the app. It should be interesting to see if Harvard’s newest app takes off; perhaps we will start seeing more medical institutions looking to make a presence on the app store. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.           | |||
| OWLE Launches Bubo; Ultimate iPhone Video Rig Posted: 26 Oct 2009 09:00 AM PDT
The Bubo comes standard with a hotshoe mount on top for LED lights, four tripod mounts and standard 37mm lens threading so that you can put your own lenses on it, in addition to the lens that the Bubo comes with. It’s been quite a journey since the first prototype of the Bubo — Harold and Graham traveled to Yahoo!’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif. for iPhoneDevCamp 3, where they won the iFund “Most Promising Startup” award. The Bubo is going on sale for pre-orders starting tomorrow for $99.95, but TechCrunch readers can pre-order starting today! Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   | |||
| Sequoia, Angel Investors Back Game Developer Unity Technologies With $5.5 Million Posted: 26 Oct 2009 08:33 AM PDT
Unity combines a development platform with a 3D game engine in a software package that enables high performance 3D interactive content for Web, Mac, PC, iPhone and Nintendo Wii games. The platform is currently used in games like Tiger Woods PGA Tour Online by ElA, the Quest for R2D2 by LEGO and FusionFall by Cartoon Networks. Earlier this year, Unity for iPhone was released and the company says more than 325 games are using its engine to power their iPhone games today. The company has recently moved its home base from Copenhagen, where it has been operating for years, to San Francisco, though its core development team is still in Copenhagen. Roelof Botha, partner at Sequoia Capital, and Greene will be joining the board of directors. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.   | |||
| Shoppers To Spend $400 Million On eBay This Year … Using Its iPhone App Posted: 26 Oct 2009 08:06 AM PDT
According to eBay CEO John Donahoe, shoppers have already spent about $400 million on the popular commerce site using the company’s free iPhone application. Ok, the shopping part of eBay’s business brought in $1.4 billion in revenue just last quarter, but who would have predicted around half a billion dollar in sales a year would be recorded through the eBay iPhone app when it debuted on the App Store? The number pales in comparison with eBay’s total sales ($59.7 billion last year), but it’s fairly significant considering the fact that the iPhone has a relatively small market share – about 15% of the smartphone segment – and mobile payment transactions are still new to many. According to this report by the Financial Times, some wealthy people have used the mobile app to buy a Lamborghini, a Bentley and a $150,000 boat. And if Mobile Marketer heard Donahoe right when he talked numbers at a summit in Las Vegas, the Lamborghini went for $350,000. Talk about being at ease with making purchases from mobile devices. Most likely, these are the high-profile exceptions to the rule and most people use the app to buy books, clothing and electronics much like regular eBay shoppers do. In total, approximately 4.6 million iPhone owners have downloaded and installed the app to date. Donahoe also said eBay will soon be introducing the next version of the app with improved functionality and features. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors   | |||
| Posted: 26 Oct 2009 07:28 AM PDT It appears that Yahoo Mail is suffering from an outage. Complaints from Yahoo Mail users are all over Twitter. It’s unclear how extensive the outage is and what is causing the issue but we’ll report back when we find out. Yahoo Mail is currently the No. 1 Web mail service with 300 million people using it worldwide, so even a smaller outage could result in a large amount of people not having access to their email accounts. Competitor Gmail also succumbed to a serious outage recently, leaving users with nearly eight hours of downtime. Update: It appears that the outage isn’t system-wide but users are still complaining of the service being down. Coincidentally, Yahoo is shutting down Geocities today so perhaps they pulled the wrong plug? Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0   | |||
| Facebook Hires Journalist Andrew Noyes To Increase Leverage In Washington Posted: 26 Oct 2009 06:57 AM PDT
That other online juggernaut, Facebook, is no exception to this rule, thus it’s no surprise to see them recruit another person to help manage public policy communications from the nation’s capital right under the company’s Director of Public Policy, Tim Sparapani. Meet Andrew Noyes (29), an experienced journalist who most recently blogged for National Journal’s CongressDaily on ‘Politics And Policy in The Wired World” and contributed a number of articles to National Journal. (Read his bio for what else he’s done the past decade) The hiring of the new public policy manager was announced internally last Friday and publicly confirmed by Noyes on his Twitter account (yes, he’s on Facebook too). Here’s how Barry Schnitt, Director, Corporate Communications and Public Policy at Facebook, delivered the news to the troops (emphasis ours):
(Via FamousDC) Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   | |||
| Study Reveals More Details About The iPhone Mom Posted: 26 Oct 2009 05:45 AM PDT A few months ago, we wrote about mobile ad network Greystripe’s study that placed “iPhone moms” (mothers of young children who own iPhones) as one of the new and growing mobile advertising demographics on the street. In August, Greystripe claimed that iPhone moms made up 29.5% of all iPhone users. Today, the ad network is releasing a follow-up report which offers detailed behavioral characteristics of moms in their iPhone ad network. Similar to the "soccer moms" demographic, iPhone moms are a consumer segment that has vast potential for advertisers and app developers. The report shows several interesting patterns. For example, over 59% of iPhone moms surveyed say they let their children use their iPhone. And 41% of moms who own iPhons download apps specifically for their children to use. Shopping is another key use of the iPhone for moms. Close to 60% of iPhone moms depend on their phone to locate the nearest store around them while 41.94% of moms use the iPhone to keep track of shopping lists. Other shopping activities include comparison shopping, (39.43%) downloading coupons (19%) or keeping track of items on sale (22.94%). When it comes to actually shopping at the grocery store, a little over half of iPhone moms use their phones at the grocery store, with 40.14% using it as a shopping list tool and 22.58% using it as a recipe resource at the store. Unsurprisingly, close to 90% of moms who have iPhones use it for personal entertainment which includes listening to music, browsing the Internet or using entertainment apps. Email comes in at a close second place with over 79.57% of iPhone moms surveyed using their phone for checking messages. And it seems that many moms use the device as an organizational tool with over 64% of iPhone moms using their phones to manage their calendar and schedule, which is 9% higher than the rest of the iPhone community as a whole. Moms are looking to the iPhone and other smartphones as both a valuable organizational tool and an entertainment portal, making the iPhone a valuable advertising platform. While Greystripe says that this demographic have tended to be late adopters, I’m not so sure if this is true considering the rapid growth of "Mommy bloggers" over the past few years. There’s a blog that's devoted to iPhone Moms and offers recommendations for kid and baby-friendly iPhone apps for moms to download. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.   | |||
| Twitter Costs British Economy $2.25 Billion A Year, And Other Nonsense Posted: 26 Oct 2009 05:38 AM PDT  There we go again. The Telegraph has published an article about some survey which claims social networks such as Twitter are costing British businesses at the very least £1.38 billion (approx. $2.25 billion) a year. Shocking findings, I daresay! Morse, the IT services and technology company who commissioned the survey, said the true cost to the economy could actually be substantially higher than the £1.38bn estimate. How about we settle for a gazillion?   | |||
| Constant Contact Enters The Online Event Registration And Marketing Arena Posted: 26 Oct 2009 03:47 AM PDT
One of the largest such providers, Constant Contact, is actually much bigger than most people think. Launched back in 1998, the company is now publicly traded on NASDAQ and boasts a market cap of nearly half a billion dollars, and the company caters to hundreds of thousands of small businesses and organizations who use its software to Répondez s’il vous plaît Some time today, Constant Contact is launching an event marketing tool, which will enable customers to promote and manage registrations and RSVPs for their meetings, seminars, parties and other events. Users will be able to enter details for their events, communicate them with their contacts via e-mail and an optional custom homepage, and receive payments for events that require attendees to pay in advance. The tool also lets users track campaigns in real-time and get extensive, automated reports on the e-mail marketing performance, payments, venue capacity and much more. I gained access to a preview version of the software, and found it had quite a robust set of features. See some screenshots below to get an idea of what it’s going to look like. Startups, take note Considering the company’s already vast customer base, I think it’s a logical step for Constant Contact to take and one that will likely provide them with another steady revenue stream. For Internet startups who operate in this field, the announcement of the new feature isn’t exactly going to be the best of news. Not that Constant Contact’s newest endeavor will effectively kill any of them outright, but it certainly limits the amount of small businesses they’ll be able to convince to use their tools for event marketing. After all, there’s now a large, public company with a big track record in handling large-scale campaigns offering a combination of e-mail marketing, online survey and event marketing tools all-in-one. Pricing for Constant Contact’s Event Marketing service will be based exclusively on the number of active events – not on the number of registrants – nor are there any additional charges based on revenue collected for events. A set-up fee will not be charged either. Pricing starts at $15 per month for up to five concurrent events. Some of the startups that will no doubt be analyzing this pricing strategy today: Meetup, Eventbrite, Evite, Cocodot, Amiando – and there’s plenty more where that came from.
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| Social Games: How The Big Three Make Millions Posted: 26 Oct 2009 03:16 AM PDT |  |  | |
| CrunchBase Profile | Zynga | Playfish | Playdom |
| Location: | San Francisco, CA | London, UK | Mountain View, CA |
| Money Raised: | $39M | $21 Million | $0 |
| Revenue: | Estimated $200M | Estimated $75M | Estimated $60M |
| Rumors: | Strong 2010 IPO candidate | Possible acquisition talks with EA | Raising Venture Capital |
| Key Apps: | Facebook: Farmville-61M Mafia Wars-25.8M Yoville-19.8M Texas Hold Em' Poker-18.3M | Facebook: Pet Society- 20.5M Restaurant City-17.3M Country Story- 8M 135 million total installs for all games | Myspace: Mobsters -14M Bumper Stickers-11.7M Own Your Friends-10.1M; Facebook: Sorority Life-7.1M Mobsters 2-3.5M Poker Palace- 1.5M |
With the iPhone 3GS, the possibilities are endless. In July 2009, 
Holy m-commerce, Batman!
It’s an inevitable truth that companies who gain a significant impact on the lives and/or wallets of Americans better have some people firmly on the ground in Washington, D.C. – just ask the likes of Microsoft and Google. 
There are hundreds of companies small businesses can turn to for tools that facilitate their e-mail marketing campaigns, some of which operate solely on the Web. 
So much for the first generation of big Facebook/MySpace social application startups. Slide and RockYou both got huge valuations in venture rounds. But a new generation of application developers has taken center stage and are racking up big revenues and their own eye popping valuations: Zynga, Playfish and Playdom.
All three own popular social games on Facebook and MySpace. Zynga’s Farmville has 61 million monthly users. Playfish’s Pet Society has 21 million monthly users on Facebook. And Playdom has 16+ million monthly users of Mobsters on MySpace and Facebook Combined.
All three companies are getting a ton of press and investor attention. Zynga wants to go public next year. Playfish probably already got bought by EA for $400 million or more. And Playdom probably raised an unannounced big chunk of venture capital over the summer.
These three companies may be generating as much as $300 million annually on sales of virtual goods. Need a shotgun to do that next job on Mobsters? No problem. Pay with a credit card, paypal, or your mobile phone and it’s all yours. And people are obviously very willing to buy these virtual goods. Nothing new there.
The goal of all of these games is to get to a higher level, and generally have more fun growing things or killing things faster than your friends. Get addicted to the free version, then start spending to move things along more quickly. Once people are committed, it’s easy to get them to pay. You can read all about it on Business Week.
Except Business Week didn’t mention the dark side of the business at all.
All three companies are willing to give game currency in exchange for offers. Sign up for Netflix. Buy a ringtone subscription. Or energy drinks. Sign up for a credit card. Get car insurance. Take an IQ survey that requires a $9.99/month mobile subscription to see the results. We even found one for arthritis medication. Here’s how it all looks. One executive we spoke with says that 70% of total revenue from these applications may come in from lead generation, not direct payments. Netflix alone will pay $30-$40 for a free trial (requires credit card).
Three companies control most of these lead generation offers: TrialPay (appears to have the most legitimate offers), Offerpal and SuperRewards.
There’s nothing wrong with basing a business off of lead generation, although some of the offers are pretty sketchy (long term credit card or mobile subscriptions for little or no value). And the FTC does tend to take a swipe at them periodically. But the bigger problem is that advertisers may not be getting much for their payouts. As the higher quality advertisers bail, pressure to add the scam artists increases.
The cycle of all of these games is pretty standard. Get new users playing for free, give them incentives to message all their friends to signup, hit them hard for cash or lead generation for revenue, and move them up the levels. Rinse. Repeat.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
The Problem With iPhone Killers…
Posted: 26 Oct 2009 03:04 AM PDT
The answer is easy, but requires some explanation. Fundamentally, the problem with most iPhone killers is that they’re not actually trying to kill the iPhone. They, as devices, may think they are, but most of them are playing a different game because of the OSes they run, and the companies behind them. One way to think about it is to compare smartphones and more precisely, their OSes, to religion (which we’ve done before). This is especially apt since the nickname for the iPhone is the “Jesus Phone.”
In a religious sense, the iPhone is a monotheistic religion. Basically, its OS believes in one device. Yes, I know there is the iPod touch, as well as variations of the iPhone (original, 3G, 3GS), but these are essentially all the same device with essentially the same hardware, just boosted specs. Meanwhile, Android, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Symbian, etc. are all polytheists. But “pagans,” while perhaps not exactly right, is a cooler term, so let’s go with that. All of these other mobile OSes are pagans. They answer to many devices, their “gods.”
Now, I’m not saying that the pagan approach is a bad one, I’m simply saying that trying to kill a monotheist device with a pagan OS is going to be very hard. The problem is that none of these pagan OSes have that one, single device that they can use to help spread their doctrine to the masses. They may put more faith in one device at any given time (which Android is already doing with Droid), but ultimately, their allegiance lies with the many other devices under their OS umbrella as well. The pagan church (in the Android case, Google), would be unwise to play favorites because it would undermine the ultimate goal: To be on as many devices as possible.
Another popular way to think about this is the PC (Windows) versus Mac history. Essentially, early on in the history of personal computing, the Mac was king. But then Microsoft came along with an OS that could run on devices from multiple manufacturers, quantity ruled the day, and the rest is history. Android, Windows Mobile, etc are often associated with taking this approach in the mobile battleground.
But things are different now. One could argue that there was a lot of other things going on inside Apple in the 1980s that led to the rise of Microsoft (and, of course, the ouster of Steve Jobs). Since then, Apple, for lack of a better phrase, has gotten its shit together (and brought Jobs back). With the iPhone — meaning the combination of the hardware, the software, and maybe most importantly, the App Store — Apple has created an ecosystem that is fueling itself.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has been trying the same “quantity” approach in the mobile space with Windows Mobile for years now. For a while, it was working fairly well, but that was mostly due to a lack of competition in what was still a very small market. Now, they’re bleeding market share in the space, and the future looks grim. Again, not so much because of the iPhone (which is hurting it short term), but because of Windows Mobile’s true competitor: Android.
Not only is Android open source, but it’s free. Windows Mobile, on the other hand, is still ridiculously charging manufacturers upwards of $25 to use their sub-par OS. Their strategy seems two pronged at this point: 1) Try to leverage the Windows PC brand as much as possible and convince users that Windows Mobile tied to Windows itself create the best environment for mobile. 2) Get out Windows Mobile 7, an entirely new OS, as quickly as possible.
The problem for Microsoft (again, for Microsoft, not Apple) is that Android now has real traction with manufacturers and a massive amount of devices about to hit (including Droid) should push Windows Mobile behind Android in the hearts and minds of the public. And while it’s still smaller in market share, that could change as well much sooner than Microsoft would like to admit.
By offering one device, Apple is accepting a trade-off: They’re sacrificing quantity for quality. Apple has complete control over its device (and probably too much with regard to the App Store), and because of that, it can build something that melds software and hardware like none of its pagan counterparts can.
In fact, the closest one to doing this is Palm with the Pre. But the Pre is not in the iPhone’s class yet (it’s too slow), and Palm is already getting ready to release another device. And they’re talking about more after than. It’s a more confined pagan religion, but its still pagan. Developers won’t be sure which device they’re developing for, etc.
Apple could go that way too someday. Since the iPhone’s launch, there have been whispers of an “iPhone mini,” but that hasn’t happened yet. More likely in the short term is that Apple’s tablet device may run some variation of the iPhone OS, which would obviously require some changes. But in the smartphone space, there will still be the one device.
And while on the face of it, it may not seem like it, that’s compelling to a lot of people. (Keep It Simple, Stupid and all that.) When you’re forced to choose between dozens of devices with dozens of different specs, it can be daunting for a consumer. With the iPhone, they know what they’re getting. And developers know what they’re getting too. They know they apps will run great on the iPhone because they were able to test it on the device rather than having to buy and test it on dozens of devices.
It’s about controlling the user experience. Whether you agree or disagree with that approach, you have to admit that Apple is very good at it.
That’s why this is not about killing the iPhone. Whispers are starting again about a “Google Phone” — that is, hardware developed (or at least entirely dictated) by Google. During the Web 2.0 Summit, Google co-founder Sergey Brin admitted that Google works more closely on some hardware for Android than others, but that’s not enough to make an iPhone killer. If Google (or Microsoft, for that matter) decides to put all of its support (and marketing support) behind one phone, let me know, then we can talk.
But supposedly, even Droid will be a series of phones. Again, the first one looks great. And it could be a real killer. But only because it runs Android, which could be a Windows Mobile killer.
[photos: Miramax, flickr/flywood, Apple]
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Join The TechCrunch Japan TokyoCamp on November 6
Posted: 26 Oct 2009 02:18 AM PDT
I’m delighted to announce the TechCrunch Japan TokyoCamp 2009, which will be held on Friday, November 6. TokyoCamp 2009 is co-organized by by DESIGN IT!, LLC. (a Sociomedia group company that runs TechCrunch Japan) and Nikkei Digital Core (a community under the umbrella of the Nikkei, Japan’s biggest business publication).
There’s going to be a demo pit (no less than 21 of Japan’s finest startups will demo their wares) and a meetup/networking party afterward.
Registration is required for both events. Here are the details:
TokyoCamp 2009
Demopit
Date: November 6, 2009
Time: Demopit 5:30pm – 7:30pm
Venue: Nikkei Shimbun 2F SPACE NIO*
Fee: Free
Meetup
Date: November 6, 2009
Time: Meetup 8:00pm – 10:00pm
Venue: Manhattan Bleu (B2 floor of Sankei Kaikan, 2 buildings away from Nikkei HQ / Google Maps)
Fee: 6,000 yen
Use this entry form to register.
Please note that we are extremely restricted on numbers this time, so don't be disappointed if you can't get on the guest list (TokyoCamp 2009 is strictly an "invitation-only" event). We hope everyone has a great evening and are looking forward to seeing you all on November 6!
*
SPACE NIO, 2nd floor, The Nikkei Head Office
1-3-7, Otemachi, Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo Metro Otemachi station: Take exit C2ba for The Nikkei Head Office
Don’t confuse this new location with the old Nikkei Head Office at 1-9-5 Otemachi.
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Salesforce And Adobe Partner To Offer Flash-Based Applications In The Cloud
Posted: 25 Oct 2009 08:50 PM PDT
With all of its SaaS offerings, Salesforce.com is consistently integrating with other forms of cutting edge technologies, such as Twitter, Box.net, and more to offer clients more diverse and appealing options. Today, the company is partnering with Adobe to offer the “Adobe Flash Builder,” off of Force.com, Salesforce’s platform to build and deploy enterprise applications.
The new offering is meant to allow developers and IT departments to build cloud-based rich media applications off of Force.com. Developers can use Adobe Flash Builder for Force.com to extend or enhance existing Salesforce CRM implementations and custom-built Force.com applications, or build entirely new applications to meet business needs.
Within the new offering, Adobe’s Flash Builder lets users build these cloud-based internet application that can be deployed to end-users via the browser though Adobe’s Flash Player or to the desktop through Adobe AIR.
The builder lets developers interactive UI features easily, such as drag and drop technology. Developers can also add data visualization such as charts and dashboards for better management and monitoring of applications. The new builder is also integrated with Adobe LiveCycle Data Services that lets clients automatically synchronize data between the Force.com database and an desktop-based Adobe AIR local data store, allowing developers to build apps that easily connect between the browser and the desktop. A screenshot of a application built with the Adobe Flash Builder is posted below.
Salesforce recently upgraded its Force.com platform by launching Force.com Sites, an application that lets companies build and run their applications for internal use as well as public use on Salesforce.com cloud computing platform. In terms of the enterprise, this is a big coup for Adobe’s Flash platform, which faces competition from Microsoft’s Silverlight product.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Tonight, You Too Can Watch U2 On YouTube, Live
Posted: 25 Oct 2009 06:22 PM PDT
U2 is streaming their concert tonight from the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California live to YouTube. As the site announced earlier this week, some 16 countries will be able to view the show live: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain, U.K., U.S. (other countries were presumably excluded due to streaming rights). The show will start at 8:30 PM PT tonight, and you can find it here.
During the show, YouTube will also feature a Twitter widget below the video player that will be displaying tweets from people who use the #U2webcast hashtag.
If you miss it live, YouTube will also put up the entire recording tomorrow on its U2 page.
U2 and technology have long gone hand in hand. Their ZooTV tour to support their albums Achtung Baby and Zooropa famously featured a massive amount of television monitors and live streaming video from all around the world. Later, U2 of course got chummy with Apple, and released their own branded iPod. But when the private equity firm Elevation Partners (which U2 lead singer Bono is a partner in) purchased a huge stake in Palm, the U2/Apple love affair seemed to sour. And since then, U2 has now seen their most recent tour sponsored by Palm and Apple rival BlackBerry.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
LawCrunch: Some (More) Ideas On Why Nokia Sued Apple
Posted: 25 Oct 2009 05:15 PM PDT
Disclaimer: Jeremy Kessel has a J.D., but is still waiting for his (July 2009) California Bar Exam results. Thus, he is not (yet) a licensed attorney. Barry L. Cohen, who also shares some insights below, is a licensed attorney. Regardless, this post is not meant as legal advice or analysis and should not be construed as such. As many of you are aware, Nokia filed a lawsuit against Apple last week in the Federal District Court in Delaware. Nokia's complaint alleges that Apple has infringed on 10 of Nokia's patents for various, "fundamental" GSM, UMTS and wireless LAN (WLAN) technologies. In particular, the patents cover wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption. Nokia believes that all 10 patents have been infringed by all Apple iPhone models shipped since the iPhone was introduced back in 2007. 
NASDAQ Launches A Slick iPhone App Highlighting Tweets From StockTwits
Posted: 25 Oct 2009 03:03 PM PDT
The free app is called NASDAQ Portfolio Manager [App Store Link], and it’s really slick. As you’d expect, you can use it to look up various stocks and get access to real-time data when the market is open. It also has some impressive stock charting options. The main individual stock screen has all the data you’d expect (highs, lows, etc), but if you rotate your iPhone to the side, you get a full chart with a variety of viewing option. And if you run your finger over this chart, you can pinpoint stock prices at various dates.
Back in regular view, if you swipe right once, you’ll be taken to a page that has all the latest tweets about that stock, coming in from StockTwits, the Twitter stock service. In this view, anyone who tweets with the StockTwits $STOCKNAME syntax will have their tweet show up here.
The NASDAQ app also makes it very easy to keep track of your own portfolio by allowing users to enter the stocks they own including the price paid, the date, and the number of shares. And you can add any NASDAQ stock to your Watch List simply by clicking the star icon along the top of the screen when you’re on a stock’s page (the starring animation is also slick). The search funtionality is very fast.
One thing you can’t do from this app is actually buy and sell stocks, but who knows, maybe we’ll see something like that in the future. Overall, this app is very solid, and its inclusion of StockTwits seems to be a very strong endorsement of that service.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
TaffyBox Combines BitTorrent Search And Web Download
Posted: 25 Oct 2009 02:14 PM PDT
An email announcing TaffyBox hit our inbox this morning. It’s yet-another-BitTorrent service, but there’s a hook that makes it a really nice choice for the casual BitTorrent user – easy search combined with a Java applet BitTorrent client for downloading.
There are other services like BitLet that let you download torrents directly from your browser via a Java applet. But you need to already know the Torrent link (usually via a Torrent search engine) to start downloading it. With TaffyBox, you can search for the name of the show, song or whatever that you’re looking for, and click a button to start downloading immediately in your browser. Point and click downloads for those who find the usual BitTorrent clients complicated.
TaffyBox just ties search and download together, and the search results seem to come from BTJunkie, who also host the tracker.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Just How Big Is TweetMeme Anyway, And Why Does It Matter?
Posted: 25 Oct 2009 12:36 PM PDT
What does TweetMeme do? They offer other sites a “retweet” button that makes it easy for readers to send story links to Twitter. We use it on all our sites, you can see it on the top right of this post. They also have analytics around tweets sent via the service, and a home page that shows the most retweeted Tweets at any given time. It competes with Digg, TechMeme, Google News and other news aggregators to show breaking news.
But is TweetMeme really so big? The short answer is no.
Comscore tracks 721,000 worldwide monthly unique visitors to TweetMeme. Quantcast says the number is more like 2.4 million. Google Trends barely registers TweetMeme against URL shortener service Bit.ly, which is similar to TweetMeme in some ways.
We believe Compete is simply counting all those javascript widgets that sites like us include on their stories. Which means it’s basically aggregating all of the traffic stats from sites that use TweetMeme. Not so useful.
Why This Matters
Everyone is trying to take real time Twitter data and massage it into a useful, filtered news stream. Bit.ly has a new product on the way called Bit.ly Now. Digg is rebuilding the service from the ground up to take advantage of Twitter data in figuring out what’s hot sooner.
If TweetMeme is really drawing that much traffic, it puts them ahead of Bit.ly and near Digg in total traffic. And that makes them a third contender in an already crowded space.
In the upcoming war between Bit.ly and Digg (and maybe TweetMeme), what matters, besides access to Twitter’s data flow, is the total traffic base to start things off. The ability to index and categorize links on the fly is also important, and all of these companies are working on ways to properly analyze data in milliseconds, which is hard to do properly at scale.
A lot is going to happen in this space in the near future.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
CrunchGear Week in Review: By Cell Light Edition
Posted: 25 Oct 2009 10:39 AM PDT
Here's a look at what happened on CrunchGear this week: The real life Burger King Windows 7 Whopper is a disgusting joke to humanity Quick Look: 13.3-inch Acer Timeline Orchestral movements by LCD light 
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