The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Facebook Passes Yahoo To Become Second Largest Traffic Source For Videos On Media Sites
- Apple Trademarks ‘VoicePass’, And I Just Nicknamed My iPhone For Them
- Skype Slowly Coming Back To Life, Estimated 10 Million People Online Again
- Dating Site Ladieshoesme Lets Ladies Pick A Man Like A Pair Of Shoes
- Facebook Appears To Be Blocking All (Bit.ly Operated) j.mp Links
- 12 Days of Christmas: Blu-Ray Player and a Redbox Subscription Giveaway
- ScienceFiction.com Aims To Become The “TechCrunch Of Sci-Fi”
- Is Microsoft Plotting A Yelp Competitor Named Postbox?
- The Gifts Project Ties A Bow On A $1 Million Round For Social Group Gifting
- “The Fastest, Easiest, Cheapest And Universal Means Of Communication”
- MobileRSS Backs Down, Will Remove Similarities To Reeder
- WikiLeaks iPhone App Made $5,840 Before Pulled By Apple, $1 From Each Sale Will Be Donated To WikiLeaks
- Path’s Next Controversial Step: 10 Second Videos
- Four Million Users Strong, Lookout Raises $19.5M For Smartphone Security Software
- Anchor Intelligence Heading To The DeadPool After Facebook Acquisition Fell Apart
- Reeder Calls Out MobileRSS For Design Theft, Community Backlash Begins
- SkyFire for iPad Launching Tonight For $4.99
- YC-Funded DotCloud: An Application Platform That Lets You Mix And Match
- Why We Panic When Internet Services Fail
- SimpleGeo’s Holiday Treats: QR Codes, Geocoders, And Simple Geo For Any Site
- Uber CEO “Super Pumped” About Being Replaced By Founder
- 12 Days Of Christmas: Sony Bloggie Touch Giveaway
- New Streetline App Gives L.A. Drivers Real Time Data On Available Parking
- Second Batch Of Crunchies Tickets On Sale Now
- How Wooga Is Becoming Europe’s Zynga (TCTV)
| Facebook Passes Yahoo To Become Second Largest Traffic Source For Videos On Media Sites Posted: 23 Dec 2010 08:46 AM PST When it comes to getting people to watch online videos from media sites, Google is still the largest source of outside traffic. Search drives views. But the second largest source of traffic is not Yahoo, Bing, or another search engine. It is now Facebook. According to a report on Online Video & The Media Industry put out jointly by Tubemogul and Brightcove, Facebook passed Yahoo in the third quarter to become the No. 2 source of traffic to online videos at media sites. (The study measures videos across the Brightcove network, with a focus on newspaper, magazine, broadcaster, brand, and online media sites). In the third quarter, Facebook shares accounted for 9.6 percent of online video traffic. Google still towers above Facebook with more than 50 percent of the referring traffic coming from search, but that is down from the second quarter when it was above 60 percent. In fact, across all search (Google, Yahoo, and Bing), referral traffic to videos on media sites is down. When it comes to actual engagement in terms of minutes watched, however, viewers coming from Twitter watch longer on average than people coming from either Facebook or search. Twitter’s higher engagement is something Tubemogul has been tracking for a while. But when you break down engagement by different type of media sites, you get more of a mixed bag. Twitter shares result in longer video views for broadcasters, brands, and online media (the orange bars in the chart below), but people coming from Facebook watch longer on magazine and newspaper sites (the purple bars). And Google (maroon bars) still beats both for time spent watching videos on newspaper sites. If you think about it, that makes sense since people go to Google looking for timely information, so they are more likely to watch a news video for a longer period of time coming off a search than, say, an entertainment video. In all of these cases we are talking about average time spent watching of less than 2 minutes, so it is all relative. The report has all sorts of other good data on how different types of media sites are doing when it comes to online video. The entire report is embedded blow. Online Video Report Q3 2010        
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| Apple Trademarks ‘VoicePass’, And I Just Nicknamed My iPhone For Them Posted: 23 Dec 2010 07:31 AM PST In the spirit of my trademark watch this morning: Earlier this week, Apple filed a U.S. trademark for ‘VOICEPASS’, in the ‘Construction and Repair Services’ category. Bloomberg casually mentioned the trademark filing earlier today, as did one iPhone tips and tricks blogger and Patently Apple. The thing about the trademark is that while it was pretty easy to find out what it is for, I haven’t seen anyone discussing its impact and potential. So here goes. The description provided to the USPTO for the trademark is pretty long, yet straightforward:
Customer support, in other words. VoicePass gets a first mention when you hit the login page for your Apple support profile.
Yes, that means that when you call Apple Support from a registered phone number, they will be able to recognize you automatically, which evidently speeds up things. Interestingly, when you actually access your support profile, you’ll notice that the feature is only available in the U.S. and Canada. You can use the service to connect a phone number to your Apple support ID, although the company points out each phone number can only be registered in VoicePass to one customer at a time, while phone numbers with extensions are apparently not eligible for VoicePass. If you’re in the United States, you can also allow Apple Support to send you SMS messages. It’s what any company’s customer support service would be doing, if this were Utopia. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure this is brand new – the trademark application mentions that Apple started using VoicePass commercially in June 2010 – but I’ve never noticed it before, and I can’t find any mention of the Apple VoicePass service anywhere on the Web, not even on the many Apple-focused blogs and news sites out there. Feel free to point out if I’m gravely overlooking something here. Update: and thanks to a commenter, I now know that VoicePass rolled out in mid-September as part of the “Express Lane” customer service feature. On a related note, Apple also filed a U.S. trademark for ‘Express Lane’ this week. Another thing I’ve noticed: when you register an Apple product, like I just did with my iPhone 3GS, you can give it a unique nickname. Apple indicates that nicknaming your devices make it easy for them to identify products when you call Support. The company asks to keep them “short and simple, in case they are spoken aloud”. Nicknames can only be used once, and cannot be saved if they contain more than 5 words, punctuation, special characters or, of course, profanity. Again, I’m not 100% certain this is entirely new, but I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere else yet so I figured I should just throw it out there. And don’t worry, I don’t actually refer to my phone as “my precious”.        
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| Skype Slowly Coming Back To Life, Estimated 10 Million People Online Again Posted: 23 Dec 2010 06:34 AM PST Skype users has been experiencing a lot of connection problems in the past day or so, as you’ve undoubtedly noticed. The service is now slowly crawling back into the land of the living. The Skype team has been doing a pretty good job keeping people informed about the problems, although they’ve been unable to say when service will be restored for everyone. The company has just announced that an estimated 10 million people are now back online, although they’re unable to obtain an exact figure because of the way the software works. Nevertheless, if you’re still in a state of panic, salvation appears nigh. Oh and in case you weren’t clear about what the problem is, exactly: it’s the SUPERNODES!        
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| Dating Site Ladieshoesme Lets Ladies Pick A Man Like A Pair Of Shoes Posted: 23 Dec 2010 06:19 AM PST  Oh man, it's going to be hard not to let my feminist side shine through writing about this topic, but I'll try my best! Ladieshoesme is a brand new French dating site, launched officially on December 13th, where ladies pick a man as if he were a pair of shoes...literally. Members essentially have to identify themselves as a pair of shoes on the platform. That means, when you create your profile, you also have to include a picture of your favorite pair of shoes. Don't have one? Not to worry, the site has a selection you can choose from. Plus, you have to also include some information in your profile regarding shoes and feet - like "For me, shoes are...(fill in)" or "What I really hate to see on someone's feet is...(fill in)." It's kind of silly and kind of fun, but does this whole expressing yourself via shoes business really change that much?
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| Facebook Appears To Be Blocking All (Bit.ly Operated) j.mp Links Posted: 23 Dec 2010 06:08 AM PST William Albano checks in to tell us that Facebook is blocking all j.mp links in status and page updates (but not profiles). Sure enough, I tried to post a j.mp link in a status update just now, and I got an error notice saying:
We should note that j.mp is a service from Bit.ly, a respected, well-funded player in the URL shortening space. A possible explanation is that there were an unusual amount of rogue j.mp URLs linking to malicious websites or spam sites, triggering Facebook’s automatic blocking mechanism. We’ve contacted Facebook to see if that’s indeed the case, or if there’s something else at play here, but we’ve not immediately received a response. For what it’s worth, Bit.ly says it uses data from a number of independent sources (including Sophos, Websense, VeriSign, PhishTank, and Google Safe Browsing) in addition to proprietary internal classifiers to determine whether or not destination sites of shortened URLs propogate spam, viruses, or other malware. Aside from that, the company also boasts that they have a “huge stream of people and companies” flagging offending sites or sites that appear as spam. You can still post bit.ly links to Facebook, and customized shortened URLs like our own tcrn.ch (which is powered by Bit.ly) also don’t seem to pose any problems. For more insight on the relationship between Bit.ly and Facebook (which also has a custom link shortener with FB.me) see here and here. We’ll update when we learn more about the issue, and if and when it will be resolved.        
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| 12 Days of Christmas: Blu-Ray Player and a Redbox Subscription Giveaway Posted: 23 Dec 2010 05:57 AM PST Grab ringside seats to the death of optical media with one of three new Blu-ray players complete with 1 year Redbox subscriptions. The folks at Redbox, who are running some other kind of concurrent Blu-Ray promotion, want their business model to remain vaguely viable for at least the next few years so they want to ensure that you and yours are enjoying fine Blu-ray entertainment as streaming moves in to eat their lunch. To that end, we must insist that you read on to find out how to win.        
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| ScienceFiction.com Aims To Become The “TechCrunch Of Sci-Fi” Posted: 23 Dec 2010 05:29 AM PST When domain name investor and blogger Patrick Ruddell (aka Chef Patrick) came across the name ScienceFiction.com, he couldn’t resist: he dropped $175,000 to buy it. The domain name had been held back by a finance company called Domain Capital due to a defaulted loan, and Ruddell contacted two sci-fi geek friends to turn it into a business. Fast forward to today, and ScienceFiction.com has launched as a way for fans to access information about all things science fiction, ranging from movies, TV shows, games, books, comic books and technology. Or, as Ruddell puts it (and not us): the “TechCrunch of Science Fiction”. The goal of ScienceFiction.com is to offer top quality news, reviews and interviews about the world of sci-fi and fantasy. Ruddell tells me he’ll handle the business side of things, while one of his partners, who he adds has a journalism degree and has been writing for 20+ years, will take care of the editorial part of the equation. He also says they have a couple of other writers lined up and ready to go. If you’re interested in all things science fiction, head on over there and subscribe.        
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| Is Microsoft Plotting A Yelp Competitor Named Postbox? Posted: 23 Dec 2010 04:34 AM PST Earlier this year, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported that Microsoft, not just Google, made a serious attempt to acquire business directory and reviews site Yelp. According to “two people involved in the negotiations”, the Redmond software giant even bid as high as $700 million for the company. Yelp instead opted to remain independent, for better or worse. Google is attacking it with Places and Hotpot. And now some information has surfaced that indicates Microsoft could be planning a Yelp rival as well. Last Thursday, December 16, 2010, a U.S. federal trademark registration was filed for ‘POSTBOX’, by Microsoft to be more precise. At first, I thought it could have something to do with the startup Postbox, which offers desktop email software for Windows and Mac OS X. Perhaps Microsoft had quietly acquired them? But then the description and category for the trademark struck me. The POSTBOX trademark is filed in the category of ‘Advertising, Business & Retail Services’. More interestingly, the description provided to the USPTO for POSTBOX is:
If you put two and two together, meaning the definition of a post box (a box into which members of the public can deposit outgoing mail) and the description of the trademark above, Microsoft appears to be plotting an online local business and events directory that invites users to submit information about those businesses, i.e. reviews, rankings and the like. This is obivously pure speculation on our part, but the trademark could also concern a Foursquare competitor when you think about it. Either way, Microsoft is obviously not blind to the massive potential of local business advertising, and the trademark filing indicates that they’re planning to build something called Postbox that will be part of its efforts in that space. Microsoft could of course tie any service neatly to its mass audience search engine Bing. We should note that there already is a U.S. trademark for ‘postbox’, registered by a San Francisco startup called Mailbox Technologies, Inc.. Commenters noted that the address listed for that company is the same as that of Postbox, who are indeed the actual proud owners of the trademark in the United States. Thus, same company. I’ve contacted Microsoft for more information, but I’ve not received a response so far (the U.S. is just waking up now so I’ll update as soon as we get an answer back from them). (Photo by Flickr user Mr Wabu)        
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| The Gifts Project Ties A Bow On A $1 Million Round For Social Group Gifting Posted: 23 Dec 2010 03:36 AM PST In recent months there’s been growing buzz here in Israel around a small startup called The Gifts Project. Today, the startup is announcing a $1 million financing round led by Gemini Israel Funds. This follows a seed investment back in 2009 by Dr. Yossi Vardi. With The Gifts Project, online retailers will be able to offer groups of people the ability to chip-in and buy a gift together for a mutual friend, colleague, or family member. A pretty simple idea with a promising potential considering social commerce is going gangbusters. What makes The Gifts Project compelling in my opinion is not only the size of opportunity in social commerce, but that it’s designed to sit rather cozily within the online purchase flow. This is because, rather than a destination play, The Gifts Project is designed as a white-label solution with the intent of helping online retailers significantly raise their average sale price. The solution, which is being kept under wraps until a debut in January, will include an analytics dashboard and a Facebook application that mirrors the group shopping functionality to be offered on the retailer’s website. There’s will also be a gift suggestion engine that leverages the recipient’s likes/interests/demographics—data pulled from his or her Facebook profile. In fact, The Gifts Project will rely heavily on Facebook Connect to facilitate the entire user flow, from Organizer (person initiating the gift buying), to Contributors (the folks chipping-in), to the Recipient (person to receive the gift). Ron Gura, CEO, tells me that Facbook integration will not be a pre-requisite to facilitate the entire purchase process, but will certainly help. We’ll follow-up with the company when it debuts next month. In the mean time, online retailers can sign up for access at GiftsProject.com.        
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| “The Fastest, Easiest, Cheapest And Universal Means Of Communication” Posted: 23 Dec 2010 03:09 AM PST We’re always pretty excited when people contact us for some new technology they’re developing, a startup they’re building, or a refreshing innovation they’ve come across. (We also like it when we get a heads up when companies or technologies screw up, but I digress). It is thus with great joy that I found an email in our anonymous tips inbox this morning with the tasty subject line: “The Fastest, Easiest, Cheapest, Most Omnipresent, and Universal Means of Communication”. Anxious to try this speedy, inexpensive and simple product or service out, I opened up the email, which read:
I’m pretty imaginative, so I was even more psyched than I was when I had only read the subject line. The only problem: that was the entire email I copied above. Sent anonymously. Not including any links or any other indication which company or service it concerns. I make fun, but I’m posting this because it’s an excellent opportunity to give you some insight on how best to reach the writers here at TechCrunch. Pro tip: there’s a pretty big box on the top right of this very page that leads to this page, where all is explained as well. In short, the best way to get in touch is using the tips@techcrunch.com email address – it goes to all writers, so if anything interesting lands in there we’re bound to spot it. If you include your contact details, apart from the email address you sent your message from, it’s easier for us to get in touch if warranted. (We’re also pretty good at quickly spotting what’s staggeringly uninteresting, so use with care) If you’d like to stay anonymous, though, use this form instead. This is really anonymous, by the way – unless you tell us who you are, we won’t have a clue. It also means we have no way of contacting you whatsoever, unless you explicitly want us to. If you’d like to contact us for another reason than getting the attention of the editorial team (i.e. to submit your company profile, to get listed in CrunchBase, to advertise on TechCrunch or to get in touch with our webmaster), there’s plenty of information on the contact page. Email still works best, in general, despite its many disadvantages. It’s fast, easy, cheap, omnipresent and universal.        
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| MobileRSS Backs Down, Will Remove Similarities To Reeder Posted: 23 Dec 2010 12:24 AM PST
They’ve just sent the following statement to us:
While that’s obviously not an explicit admission of any wrongdoing, or even an apology, the move to re-submit and the statement alone are a clear acknowledgment that so-closely mimicking the design of Reeder was not a good idea. The first part of the statement is a bit vague with the idea of “modifications” and talk of doing what’s best for their users, but the second paragraph directly states that “similarities” to Reeder will be removed at once. We’ve reached out to Reeder developer Silvio Rizzi for his reaction and will update when we hear back.        
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| Posted: 22 Dec 2010 06:45 PM PST Igor Barinov, the developer behind the WikiLeaks app that got removed from the App store, has revealed the total breakdown of his app’s reach before it got taken down by Apple. Total damage? 4443 downloads and $5,840.14 in profit. The Moscow-based Barinov says that he’ll be donating $1.00 from each sale, a total of $4443 dollars, to WikiLeaks. Barinov explained his motivations on our original post, “I dont mind what wikileaks posts. But i like the way they are defending what i care about = my domain, my traffic, my 127.0.0.1. And if that way will lead to “alternative internet” – i dont want just to press Like button.” Perhaps this semi-charity feature is what lead Apple to take down the app in the first place? Barinov holds that the company said over the phone that the app violated the following points of the iPhone Developer TOS. Apple confirmed the first point but not the second in a statement to the New York Times.
Because he’ll have to wait until January for Apple to transfer the money to his account, Barinov tells us he’ll most likely end up paying out of pocket initially. He also says will be sending the modest profits he did eek out to WikiLeaks via wire transfer (other options include sending a check but not PayPal, Mastercard or Visa) but is unclear on how to confirm that WikiLeaks actually received the money. Barinov gave us no word on whether he plans on setting up shop in the Android market, which currently boasts multiple WikiLeaks apps. Update: Barinov just sent me Apple’s official written response, the second TOS statute that the app is violating is …
not 21.1 as reported above. Barinov also mentioned that he has already sent the money to WikiLeaks.        
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| Path’s Next Controversial Step: 10 Second Videos Posted: 22 Dec 2010 06:33 PM PST
The latest version of Path, 1.2, which should be live in the App Store shortly, allows users to upload these short video clips alongside the standard pictures. And just as with pictures, these video clips can be tagged with the people, places, and things in them. Path 1.2 brings some other new features as well. For example, users will now see people they’ve recently tagged in pictures and videos at the top of their own streams. The idea here is to show you content from people you’re actually hanging out with the most. The new Path also has a better iPhone notification system. This will take you directly to the posts mentioned rather than just the app itself. The 10 second time limit is an interesting choice. Certainly, from a mobile perspective, it makes some sense. Videos, even short ones, can take a while to upload when you’re not connected to WiFi. But this will remind some users of the old 12 Seconds service — one of the original “Twitter for video” services that didn’t end up too well. Again, look for the new version of the app shortly here. And see more in the video below.
       
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| Four Million Users Strong, Lookout Raises $19.5M For Smartphone Security Software Posted: 22 Dec 2010 05:50 PM PST
Lookout's web-based, cloud-connected applications for Android, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry phones help users from losing their phones and identifies and block threats on a consumer's phone. Users simply download the software to a device, and it will act as a tracking application and a virus protector much like security software downloaded to a computer. The company also announced today that it now has four million users, after crossing the two million mark in September. The company says the growth in smartphone adoption, mobile app downloads and increased consumer awareness of mobile security threats have made consumers aware of the security threats on mobile phones. Similar to a PC, users are now recognizing the need to protect their phones from malware, viruses, data loss and more. Lookout, which was just featured in a Verizon Wireless commercial, has also started bringing in revenue, recently rolling out its first premium services which include the ability to view a comprehensive list of apps that can access users private data, such as identity information, location, and messages. The premium plan also includes the ability to remotely wipe and lock a phone in case it is lost or misplaces. You will also be able backup and restore photos and call history, contacts and other data from different phones. Smartphone security is sure to be a growing market, and Lookout says the new funding will be used for further expansion as well as new product development. And Lookout CEO and founder John Hering says that we can expect a security software app for iOS devices, including the iPhone, to be released in 2011.        
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| Anchor Intelligence Heading To The DeadPool After Facebook Acquisition Fell Apart Posted: 22 Dec 2010 05:29 PM PST
The company has raised $6 million in venture capital – all of it prior to 2008 – plus another million dollars or so in debt from Western Technology Investment. The company has been trying to raise a new round of venture capital and almost succeeded in early 2010, sources say, but for a variety of reasons the deal never closed. Facebook was also close to acquiring the company in the Summer, say multiple sources. The deal, like many other Facebook acquisitions, would have given investors some of their capital back, with lucrative stock-based compensation going to founders and employees. But that deal fell through too. With no new investors at hand and a couple of competitors like Click Forensics executing extremely well, the company’s investors and creditors made a hard decision, say our sources – shut things down and sell off the assets. WTI should have its debt repaid and there may be some additional proceeds to divide up among investors. CEO Ken Miller has also left the company, we’ve confirmed. We’re putting Anchor Intelligence into the TechCrunch DeadPool.        
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| Reeder Calls Out MobileRSS For Design Theft, Community Backlash Begins Posted: 22 Dec 2010 03:50 PM PST When it comes to RSS readers, there’s no question that my preference is to use Reeder. Whether on iPhone, iPad, or the Mac, their apps brings a usability and elegance to an otherwise ugly medium. And obviously, design is a huge part of that. So when Reeder developer Silvio Rizzi saw that exact design being used by a competitor, MobileRSS, he was obviously pissed off. And from the looks of it, rightfully so. What Rizzi did next was both ballsy and brilliant. He created a page on his site to show side-by-side examples of just how bad the rip-off is. And support quickly flowed in. Stories about the rip-off began surfacing. As did hundreds (if not thousands) of retweets. And now the community that is partially responsible for the success that MobileRSS has seen up until now has started responding as well. Read It Later, the popular bookmarking service, has written a post to let users know that as a show of support for Reeder, they’ve disabled MobileRSS’s API key. The service notes that they’ve decided to do this even though MobileRSS is the third-highest news app used by Read It Later users over the past year. They say that any user who feels wronged by this decision should email them and they’ll figure out a way to offset the costs. Hopefully no one does, because this is just the right thing to do. We’ve reached out to MobileRSS for a comment about the situation and will update if we hear back. Update: Instapaper developer Marco Arment had thrown his support behind Reeder as well. Update 2: And now MobileRSS is backing down. They’ll re-submit the app removing the similarities.        
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| SkyFire for iPad Launching Tonight For $4.99 Posted: 22 Dec 2010 03:04 PM PST It’s been a busy couple of weeks for the folks over at SkyFire. They launched their Flash Video-friendly browser for the iPhone back in early November, only to pull it down almost immediately to ease the onslaught of users hammering their video transcoding server. Even with that temporary App Store absence, however, SkyFire for iPhone managed to pull in just shy of a million bucks in its first weekend alone. There wasn’t much time to celebrate, though, as SkyFire had another device in its sights: the iPad. With their first stab at iOS proving to be a pretty friggin’ hot success, it wasn’t a question of if — it was a question of when, and how much. We’ve just been clued in on the answers to both.        
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| YC-Funded DotCloud: An Application Platform That Lets You Mix And Match Posted: 22 Dec 2010 02:59 PM PST
DotCloud is a new Y Combinator-funded company launching today that’s similar to these, but with a key difference: instead of focusing on one or two popular development stacks, it wants to give developers more flexibility by letting them mix and match from over a dozen preconfigured components. Founder Solomon Hykes explains that most services like Heroku limit what languages and tools you can use, which can prove problematic over time. Sometimes companies decide they want to add a new language midway through a project, because their developer happens to be exceptionally good at it. Or they want to adopt a different kind of database or framework to suit scaling needs. DotCloud is setting out to give them the flexibility they need to make those kind of changes midstream. The product has been in alpha testing for the last three months, and has been used by 20 fellow Y Combinator companies during that time. Hykes says that the team tweaked the product based on the requests of these YC classmates and alums, and the broad adoption by these companies seems to indicate that they liked what DotCloud came up with.        
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| Why We Panic When Internet Services Fail Posted: 22 Dec 2010 02:37 PM PST Twitter is down. Skype is down. Tumblr is down. Facebook is down. Twitter is down again.You can base an entire tech reporting career around writing these types of posts. Because if you’re like me and millions of other users right now, you can’t access your Skype account due to a network connection failure. And like electricity or Internet, I need Skype to do my job well. What usually happens in these cases is that users will migrate to another system of communication, which may or may not cause further issues. Twitter tells us that today’s outage had nothing to do with Skype’s failure (or the fact that it’s raining, or Wednesday), even though complaints about “… is down” are often high frequency on Twitter. So much so that academics have used tweets to measure the downtime of other services like Gmail and Pay Pal. I took my no Skype-induced anxiety to Quora, where I asked end users of these services the “Why do we panic when things go down?” question. Glen Murphy, design lead for Google Chrome, answered quickly, “Because it feels like the power going out; you’re suddenly cut off from that which you find valuable (even if it’s not objectively valuable).” Old tech like landlines and television was simply more reliable. Telcom companies in the US hold themselves to the high availability standard of five 9s or %99.999 percent availability. In contrast Internet services like Twitter hover around the three 9s range. Tumblr recently went down for 24 hours, imagine what would happen on Twitter if the entire US lost traditional telephone service for an entire day. The increasing popularity of distributed offices is also a factor in the collective freak out. At TechCrunch we use Skype and Yammer to consult with each other on posts — I’m pretty handicapped at the moment by not being able to communicate with my colleagues or sources through Skype. I might as well take the day off (MG just Yammered that he will be available through carrier pigeon). And it’s not just TechCrunch, says theLIFT’s James Touhey on Quora, “In the case of the current Skype outage, our business relies on constant communication (we have talent around the world) and when a company depends heavily on one application service for this, it can cause major problems. The panic sets in when you don’t have a clue when it will be restored.” In micro-testament to how fundamental Internet communication has become to our lives, there is nothing I want more right now than Skype to be restored and Twitter to stay up for the rest of the day — Judging by the tips@techcrunch inbox and Twitter search lot of you are with me. You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone, indeed.        
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| SimpleGeo’s Holiday Treats: QR Codes, Geocoders, And Simple Geo For Any Site Posted: 22 Dec 2010 02:12 PM PST
So what did they want to get out the door before the new year? The biggest thing is what’s known as JSONP / JavaScript SDK, which is a new feature of their APIs that allows anyone to enable location on any website they control. This is done with two things: GeoIP and the W3C’s Geolocation API. The former is a technology used while they wait for more browsers to adopt the latter. Essentially, it looks up your IP address on the fly and geocodes it. Also new is a way to easily turn human-readable addresses into the appropriate location data with SimpleGeo products. This means you can use an actual address instead of a latitude and longitude numbers. Currently, this will be U.S.-only, but the plan is to expand it. SimpleGeo also finally has product pages for their main products. I’ve already linked to Context and Places above, but there’s also a Storage page (which is in private beta). Each of these pages have live demos of how the products actually work.
SimpleGeo has said that all of their supported clients (iOS, Android, Java, and Python) will now have all of these features. Read a bit more about the new additions on SimpleGeo’s blog.        
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| Uber CEO “Super Pumped” About Being Replaced By Founder Posted: 22 Dec 2010 02:01 PM PST
In the future I think the service could expand to let anyone become a “driver,” much like AirBnB lets anyone rent out their home like a hotel. For now though the service is limited to black car services and is available only in San Francisco (and one fun night in Paris). The company was founded by entrepreneurs Garrett Camp, Travis Kalanick and Oscar Salazar. They hired Ryan Graves on as CEO (see our interview here). They found him via a post on Twitter. And now Ryan is passing the CEO torch to Kalanick. Ryan’s comment about the switch: “Personally, I’m super pumped about how well rounded the team has become with Travis on board full time.” His new title is General Manager and VP Business Operations. Kalanick has been on the bench for two years after selling his previous company to Akamai. He’s focused on angel investing since then. For his part, Kalanick says he’s been thrilled with Ryan as CEO but wants to step back in to an operating role at a startup: “Ryan has shown the ability to build and scale an operation. Ryan will continue to drive that scale growth as we expand nationally and worldwide, and he's the archetype for the kind of people he will hire to further scale the business operations side of the house.” He added “I'm frickin' pumped to be on board full-time with Uber!” People are seriously pumped about this change. The company is also talking about how the idea for Uber began at the Le Web conference in 2008:
See the whole Uber blog post here.        
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| 12 Days Of Christmas: Sony Bloggie Touch Giveaway Posted: 22 Dec 2010 01:59 PM PST The Sony Bloggie camera is for taking pictures and videos with. It is my understanding that some people would be particularly interested in this hardware and so we are pleased to offer two of these items to two of our readers. Does that sound nice? Sure it does.        
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| New Streetline App Gives L.A. Drivers Real Time Data On Available Parking Posted: 22 Dec 2010 01:38 PM PST
Streetline’s goal is to help communities cut traffic congestion, wasted energy, drive time, and noise and air pollution from cars. The startup, backed by Sutter Hill Ventures, works with builder-contractors to install its proprietary sensors in the ground, and additional repeaters and gateways up in light poles and trees, to make a mesh network. Once an area’s streets are rendered “smart,” they can record and report when cars arrive, occupy or depart spaces (and more). The sensors, manufactured in Mountain View, Calif., have been installed in about 3,000 spaces through Los Angeles city blocks in Hollywood, Studio City and parts of Chinatown so far reports the chief executive of Streetline, Zia Yusuf. The Parker for iPhone app could prove formidable competition for earlier-to-market concepts like: Open Spot, a Google Labs brainchild that uses crowdsourcing to gather data about available parking; or Mobile Parking Apps available in Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, LA, and New York. Among other things, Mobile Parking Apps shows drivers rate comparisons between parking garages and metered spaces, and offers them deals or discounts when applicable.
Yusuf said the company plans to roll out an Android app within the first quarter of 2011. Down the line, he expects the Parker app to deliver more information and features to users such as: the availability of spaces in nearby garages that could be an alternative to street parking; data about spaces equipped with electric vehicle charging stations; or a feature that lets users pay meters or fines by mobile phone. The CEO quipped ahead of Parker’s release, “You know when people say, ‘Man! I drove around for 15 minutes just looking for parking?’ Enjoy it now. Because that is quickly becoming an archaic or obsolete discussion.” Los Angeles is not the only city interested in this technology (though it may be the one with the worst smog). Roosevelt Island, New York, Sausalito, Culver City, and Washington D.C. have signed on to use Streetline sensors to better understand transportation in their cities. Recently, the company announced a partnership with Siemens to develop digital street signs that can direct drives sans smart phones to available parking, efficiently. Until now, Streetline focused on providing data capability to cities, airports and universities. Parker for iPhone is its first foray into consumer markets. The app will initially cost $1.99.        
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| Second Batch Of Crunchies Tickets On Sale Now Posted: 22 Dec 2010 01:23 PM PST
Remember that nominations are still open and will remain open until Christmas Eve, when the clock strikes 12am PST. Everyone is eligible and encouraged to vote daily for their favorite people, products, and companies of the year. The Crunchies Awards will celebrate the best tech accomplishments of 2010. The award ceremony will be held at the beautiful Palace Of Fine Arts Theater in San Francisco on January 21, 2011 at 7:30 pm PST, with our after party following right after at the Exploratorium. Along with our co-hosts, GigaOm and VentureBeat, we will announce the winners from all categories live on stage. All tickets include access to the after party hosted at the Exploratorium through midnight. You will find a fully-hosted bar, unlimited nibbles and desserts, a fun gaming room, and many other surprises. Check out the party photos from the last two years here and here. There are plenty of ways to sponsor and support our events. We have packages available in all shapes and sizes. For more information, please contact Jeanne Logozzo regarding sponsorship opportunities for the Crunchies Awards or the after party. We hope to see you soon. Update: The second release of tickets have sold out. Stay tuned for our next release date!        
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| How Wooga Is Becoming Europe’s Zynga (TCTV) Posted: 22 Dec 2010 01:12 PM PST
These bring wooga in a line with Zynga and EA/Playfish – the only developers with more then one game over one million daily players. At Le Web I caught up with CEO Jens Begemann who told me about their growth so far and the tech scene in Berlin.        
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This afternoon, 
Since their 
A couple weeks ago, 
Finally, SimpleGeo has given all of their features QR codes. They say that instead of using the .json file, use a .png extension, and you’ll see the QR code while can easily be scanned by the appropriate apps in smartphones. (In this post, find the code for the TechCrunch office in San Francisco.)
Know about 
Parker for iPhone, a new app by 
The app itself features: a map of city blocks with color-coded dots to help users quickly see where there are more than four spots, more than two spots, or fewer than two spots available. It also delivers information about parking space time limits, pricing, and whether meters take credit cards or coins. 
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