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- The Top 40 iPhone Apps of 2010
- What Facebook Can Give Back To The Web
- With a New Version, FLUD Hopes to Take on Pulse And Flipboard as Your iPad News Reader
- Santa Brings Bump Its Biggest Day Of Sharing Ever, Swapping 20 Photos A Second
- UWall.Tv Turns YouTube Into Your Own MTV
- Flickr Should Have Built Instagram. But They Didn’t. Here’s Why.
- Happy Birthday: Jesus Is almost Bigger than Angry Birds (TCTV)
| The Top 40 iPhone Apps of 2010 Posted: 26 Dec 2010 06:30 AM PST Editor’s note: This guest post is written by Alex Ahlund, the former CEO and founder of AppVee and AndroidApps, which were acquired by mobile application directory Appolicious. You can read his previous iPhone app picks here and here The iTunes App Store is huge. More than 300,000 apps huge. I’ve watched this monster start from nothing and turn into a billion-dollar industry in only a few short years. We’ve been approaching this point for some time now, but it’s more apparent than ever that app exposure is of critical importance. A healthy majority of iOS app users discover new applications directly from their device as opposed to using iTunes. If you look specifically at the iPhone, the amount of real estate for discovery is only available to a very small percentage of the total apps. There are currently 20 overall categories, with Games offering an additional 20 subcategories. Each subcategory is broken into three lists and displays a max of 100 apps on the iPhone. Throw in a small number from the Top 25 and Featured lists and you wind up with roughly 12,000 apps being shown at one time. This works out to only about 4% of all apps that receive visibility. One can browse beyond this number on iTunes, but that quickly becomes an overwhelming, laborious task. The expectation is that the market will dictate an app’s worth, but it doesn’t always work out that way. If you look at the top lists, they are littered with clones, cheap knockoffs and impulse grabs. Ninety-nine cent buys are just too tempting. Without proper exposure (and potentially more appropriate pricing schemes), many truly great apps never see the light of day. With that said, I’ve compiled what I believe to be the best apps that have come out this year. Some got well-deserved exposure, while others were lost in the shuffle. The difficult part of assembling a "best of" list is striking a balance between apps with mainstream appeal and those with real innovation. There are a number of factors that took place in the selection (such as the merits of an app itself, not just the usefulness of an established service it utilizes) and not every good app could make the cut. I present the top apps of 2010: Top iPhone apps: 1. Instagram: Take a photo or select one from your library, apply a visual effect to it and then post it to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, or Foursquare. While there are plenty of photo filter applications out there, Instagram stands apart because of how easy it is to get a unique and professional result. Indie styling without the need for a vintage camera or Photoshop skills. 2. Chase Mobile: While I don’t use Chase for banking, this app deserves some serious recognition. For an industry that isn’t known for pushing the technology envelope, Chase did something pretty cool here. Instead of going to a banking center or ATM, you can simply take a picture of the front and back of a check and the amount is deposited into your account. Beats driving to a bank. 3. Price Check by Amazon: Sure, there are several barscanning apps out there. Some work better than others, but Price Check is just about flawless. Considering I buy nearly everything from Amazon (from vitamins to electronics), I may be a bit biased. But regardless, this app offers an easy, effective way to check the price of physical goods in a store to see if you can get it cheaper online. 4. Find My iPhone: This was a great move by Apple to release the Find My iPhone feature without requiring a paid MobileMe account. With this, you can see where your phone is on a map, display a message, lock the phone or completely wipe it. 5. Google Voice: Long awaited, Google Voice has been in approval limbo for ages. I thought it would never see the light of day (due possibly to objections from AT&T) but to most people’s surprise, it was approved. With Google Voice, you can replace your calling plan with a unique number that includes dialing, texting, voicemail, and message transcription. 6. Twitter: After acquiring Tweetie, Twitter relaunched this as the official Twitter app for the iPhone. It remains the standard bearer. How many times a day do you pull down to refresh? 7. Dropbox: I’m a big proponent of the digital nomad lifestyle, so I always stay backed up on the cloud. I want to be able to access, view, retrieve and share any of my files whether I have my computer with me or not, and the Dropbox app helps me do that. It does require a Dropbox account, but its free for up to 2gb of storage. 8. SpringPad: While the Evernote app is great (I use it to catalog most of my notes and ideas), SpringPad really steps up mobile notetaking. You can write a quick memo, take a snapshot, scan a barcode of an item to remember, or have the app search nearby shops and restaurants to add. There are a lot more options than Evernote and it seems a bit speedier to quickly unload a thought. 9. Foursquare: Okay, this one didn’t come out this year, but any Best iPhone Apps list would be incomplete without it. Checking in, which seemed so quirky a year ago, is now an obsession with millions of people, and they can thank Foursquare. Tell people where you are, get mayorships, badges, and maybe some other rewards. The latest update just added comments and photo checkin capabilities. (Gowalla is still looking good too). 10. Skyfire Web Browser: I haven’t met anyone yet who doesn’t hate the fact that the iPhone lacks Flash support. While Skyfire is by no means a perfect solution, it offers us a way to watch Flash videos from the web on our iPhone. Unfortunately, it does not support Flash games and not all sites with Flash video are supported. 11. Kindle: I’m one of those people who prefers reading off an e-ink Kindle to an LCD iPad. For the millions like me, the Kindle app makes a perfect companion. However, while I don’t take my Kindle everywhere, I always have my phone. Just boot up the app and you can continue reading from where you last left off. 12. Word Lens: Word Lens is one of the few apps that really shows the potential of the iPhone. Aim your phone at anything with standard printed writing on it in another language (a sign, newspaper, etc.) and Word Lens will replace it with translated copy. The amazing thing is that it will do it in realtime. Currently it only supports English to Spanish translations (and visa versa), but greater language support is on the way. It has a few quirks, but the speed and accuracy is very impressive. 13. Groupon: This is a solid companion app to the daily-deal service Groupon, which offers up a deeply discounted product or service for a limited time. The app makes the process easier to manage without the need of the website. There are a few ancillary features like Discussion, but the real reason to keep it around is to easily check out the daily deals. 14. Hashable: If you are a heavy networker or just like introducing people, Hashable is the app for you. It lets you introduce people via Twitter or email and annotate all your meetings with hashtags like #lunch or #justmet so that you can go back later and search through them. You also get “Hashcred” every time you use the app, which pushes you up the leaderboard. This is a business app, but it feels fun. Top Entertainment Apps: 15. Netflix: I’m a huge fan of Netflix streaming and this app is a great way to watch streamed content right on your iPhone. I was expecting movie streaming to be slow over 3G but was surprised to see that after a short loading period, it was extremely smooth. Quality settings are reduced depending on the connection, but all in all, it works great. 16. Hulu: I was on the fence about the Hulu app since Netflix covers so many of my media needs. This app requires you to subscribe to the Hulu Plus service, which is the same price as a Netflix streaming account. However, Hulu contains a lot of great TV content that will fill in many of the holes left by Netflix. The app itself feels solid and the streaming quality seems to be on par with Netflix in terms of looks and speed. 17. TuneIn Radio: The problem with Internet radio has been that despite being awesome, it hasn’t allowed access to local radio. TuneIn Radio lets you listen in on thousands of real radio stations across the country. With a bunch of features like the ability to pause and rewind live radio, it makes a great addition next to Pandora and Slacker. 18. Rhapsody: Rhapsody is an all-you-can-eat music listening service. For the longest time, iPhone/iPod Rhapsody users have been left out in the cold if they wanted to take their songs with them. But now, with the Rhapsody app, you can listen to as much music from the service as you like without needing an active Internet connection. 19. TextPics: Emoji are fun to add to text messages to other iPhone users—the problem is that your iPhone-less friends can’t see them. TextPics tries to solve this issue by giving you a bunch of ASCII “drawings” that you can text or include in emails. The best part is they are made up of standard text characters, so anyone can receive them on any device. Top iPhone games: 20. Angry Birds: It’s not easy to ignore Angry Birds—you’ll usually find it hanging out at that #1 top spot. It’s one of the first phenomenons to come out of the iPhone world, spawning seasonal versions, toys and even a movie deal. I doubt it even needs a description, so if for some reason you’re just now crawling out from under a rock, go and download Angry Birds. 21. Plants vs Zombies: I came from the casual games industry so I’ve been a fan of PopCap for a long time. PvZ is a streamlined, linear tower defense game. Your goal is to defend your home from a swarm of zombies using a variety of different plants from common pea shooters to exploding landmine plants. With a simple, fast paced method for earning money to upgrade your defenses, this game is an entertaining blend of action, strategy and zombies. 22. Trade Nations: This is one of my favorite freemium games on the iPhone. In some ways, it plays like a cooperative real-time strategy game. You place houses to create workers, develop timber yards to bring in lumber, harvest wheat for food, etc. It’s a rewarding experience best played in short, productive bursts. Every action takes time, so it’s always interesting to check in and do a little management during a break. 23. Gun Bros: Most duel-stick survival shooters on the iPhone are simple, shallow experiences. Gun Bros. takes the genre to the next level by offering a freemium upgrade system, a unique visual style and a robust leveling mechanic. If you’re a fan of fast paced top-down shooters, this is the one to grab. 24. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars: I’m generally not a fan of ports but this time it was done right. GTA: CW is a faithful translation of its Nintendo DS counterpart. The game is presented in a 3D overhead perspective, combining elements from the original GTA and GTA 4. Despite having an appearance similar to the former, it actually plays more like the latter and those familiar with Liberty City will find themselves right at home here. 25. N.O.V.A 2: If you’ve ever wanted to play Halo on the iPhone, this is the closest you’ll get for now. Like the original, you battle your way through a lush Sci-Fi environment while utilizing a huge arsenal of futuristic weaponry and powers, like the ability to slow down time. With improved graphics, more expansive environments, unique game components like piloting vehicles, and an array of visual effects, N.O.V.A 2 is sure to provide fans of the original, as well as newcomers, with an engrossing experience. 26. Puzzle Agent: This is why I like doing these lists. Games like Puzzle Agent deserve recognition for stepping outside the box and delivering an engrossing experience. You play as an FBI agent from the Puzzle Investigation Division in a game that combines elements of classic adventure games with thought-provoking puzzles. Together with quirky artwork and good voice acting, this is one to try out. 27. Rhythm Spirit: Rhythm Spirit is the sleeper hit of the year. It was loved by critics, but flew under the radar for many iPhone gamers. The game is a rhythm-based fighting game featuring a rich storyline based on Japanese folklore. Imaginative characters, unique gameplay and a genuinely awesome techno-zen soundtrack make Rhythm Spirit a must have for both fighting and rhythm game fans. 28. Ragdoll Blaster 2: Trajectory games have been all the rage for the iPhone. And while the genre has seen plenty of below average apps, Ragdoll Blaster 2 stands out from the crowd. With whimsical, steampunk-inspired graphics and tons of variety in level design and background art, RB2 is a deep and rewarding puzzler. 29. Spiderman: Total Mayhem: The world of Spiderman makes for one of the best gaming environments, despite the mixed results of many past attempts. Total Mayhem for the iPhone succeeds in offering up a very attractive, highly playable web-slinging experience. This solid beat-em-up gives you all of Spidey’s skills as you swing through cityscapes, web-up bad guys, and engage in some good ol’ fashion fisticuffs. Total Mayhem is visually fantastic and features truly excellent fighting mechanics. 30. Mirror's Edge: I’ve been fascinated with parkour ever since the movie Yamakazis came out. I even signed up to train in it with more or less unfortunate results. So for now, Mirror’s Edge is the closest I’ll get to spending my weekends leaping from rooftops. I was a big fan of the game on consoles, so I initially approached this iPhone adaptation warily. However, I quickly discovered that this version is surprisingly competent with intuitive controls and an effective, device-friendly side-scrolling perspective. Smooth, flowing animation and beautifully sharp 3D graphics evocative of the original console version contributes to the uniquely satisfying, running and jumping experience. 31. Cut the Rope: I didn’t want to like this game. It shot up to the #1 position on the App Store after only a day. I thought there surely had to be some foul play at work. But the truth is, regardless of whether or not “creative” marketing methods were used, the game is pretty damn fun. The objective is to get a piece of candy, dangling from a rope, into a cute monster’s mouth. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Plenty of obstacles get in your way and before long, you’ll find yourself absolutely addicted to helping the little guy get his sugary fix. 32. Fruit Ninja: Some games are just fun for their sheer mindless simplicity – Fruit Ninja is one of those games. As 3D fruits hop into view, you run your finger across the screen to cut them in half—simple as that. Slice up the endless onslaught of fruit while avoiding the game-ending bombs. Each session begins at a slow, steady pace with the action gradually becoming more intense and frantic as you progress. 33. Osmos: There is a certain zen-like satisfaction you get from playing Osmos. You control an amoeba-like blob that must consume smaller entities to grow, and then expel them to move. You’ve got to be alert to maintain this careful balancing act, but the meditative lull of Osmos’ ambiance creates a uniquely relaxing, trancey experience. 34. Smurfs' Village: When it comes to freemium management games currently available on the App Store, the experience is too often shallow and predictable. This isn’t the case with Smurf’s Village. While the objective is still to build and develop your village, the game is jam packed with tasks, mini-games and even a loose narrative. Smurf’s Village features great music and excellent, hi-res graphics that are sure to instill a warm sense of nostalgia to anyone who spent the 80′s watching Saturday morning cartoons. Top Technical Achievement games: The iPhone has come a long way in terms of processing power and developers are starting to figure out how to get the most out of the hardware. The following games are truly impressive examples of what the iPhone is capable of: 35. Modern Combat 2: Black Pegasus: It’s no simple task to bring a console-quality first-person shooter to a device the size of your hand. It’s a careful balance of processing, assets, and usability. Fortunately, Modern Combat does a highly commendable job of pulling it off. High-res graphics, impressive visual effects, and detailed environments give Modern Combat 2 more than enough reason to be considered a technical achievement this year. 36. Star Wars Arcade: Falcon Gunner: You are going to want to play this gam ein a swivel chair. The 360-degree graphics take advantage of the iPhone’s gyroscope to let you swivel around and shoot TIE Fighters from the Millenium Falcon’s gun turret. The gameplay is pretty basic, but the 360-effect and 3D graphics put you in the action like no other game. You can also play in augmented reality mode which switches the background to your camera view, making it look like the TIE Fighters are in your room or flying through the air. 37. Samurai 2: Vengeance: I love games that really push style and character, and Samurai 2: Vengeance does just that. Visually, the game looks like it could be a younger sibling of Capcom’s console gem, Okami. The art is like a combination of Japanese brush painting and anime, giving Vengeance an amazingly rich and distinct style. Thick outlines, flat colors and exaggerated motion create a unique manga look that boldly stands out in the App Store. 38. Real Racing 2: The first Real Racing took the App Store by storm when it was released last year. It was one of the few apps that showed what the iPhone was really capable of. Real Racing 2 doesn’t disappoint in keeping that tradition alive. RR2 is the best looking racing game available for the iPhone. From the detailed tracks and environments, to the actual licensed cars themselves, this will be sure to impress even the most cynical of driving sim enthusiasts. While Real Racing 2 has packed in even more play modes, multiplayer options and cars, it still uses the near flawless control scheme options of its predecessor. 39. Rage HD: I generally dislike the "on-rails" mechanic for any game. If I absolutely had to play an on-rails shooter, I’d more likely head on down to the coin laundry and play some Operation Wolf. But that does not diminish the fact that Rage HD is currently one of the two best looking games in the App Store today. Sharp textures, dynamic lighting, and high poly rendering make this an impressive feat. Now if they would just pry us off these rails we could have a seriously awesome shooter on our hands. 40. Infinity Blade: Infinity Blade is by far the best looking game ever to appear on the iPhone. Developed by Epic using the same engine that powered the incredible tech demo, Epic Citadel, it is no surprise that Infinity Blade is visually on par with modern console games. The gameplay consists of tapping and swiping the screen in a variety swashbuckling maneuvers as you fight against a succession of guards attempting to prevent you from reaching the God King. In addition to the combat, the game also features some interesting RPG elements and a functional storyline to provide context for all the mayhem. And though it doesn’t offer the deepest or most fulfilling gameplay, Infinity Blade succeeds in ushering in the new visual benchmark for high-end iPhone gaming. Tell us which apps you would put on this list.        
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| What Facebook Can Give Back To The Web Posted: 25 Dec 2010 08:28 PM PST In Time’s Person of the Year 2010 article on Mark Zuckerberg, one fact shouts out to me above all others: 1 in 4 Web pages in the United States is now viewed behind the walls of Facebook. I enjoy Facebook and would be happy spending a quarter of my Web life there, if I could leave Facebook for the other 75%. But even if I log out completely, most of the Web’s most popular sites are tied to Facebook, through Share or Like or Connect buttons. Facebook is not just another Web site: it is a service that “Facebookizes” every Web site it touches, making me bring all of my friends with me, like luggage. It’s disconcerting being on a Web site that I’m used to browsing anonymously, and seeing my friends’ faces there. And so I have a holiday wish: Facebook, let me dance if I want to, let me leave my friends behind. For the last twenty years, we’ve enjoyed One Web that is united through the common policy of letting us be whoever we want to be, wherever we go. One Web allows us at times to be cooler than we are in real life, aspirational, anonymous, and/or fanatical about a particular subject. And that is why the Web is wonderful. Over the last five years, Facebook added a new hat to the One Web haberdashery, by giving us the ability to be a person who is a friend online with the people we have known in real life (as well as people we’ve never met). In 2010 Facebook added Instant Personalization, with the explicit goal of letting us be our Facebook selves everywhere. But in so doing, we have lost the On/Off button: I love being my Facebook self some places, but how do I turn it off on-the-fly? This presents an opportunity for Facebook to give back to the Web: please let us take off our Facebook hats whenever we want by replacing the Connect button with an On/Off button that lets us see clearly whether we are being Facebookized on any given page of the Web. One Web is as old as the Web itself: The 1993 New Yorker joke was that on the Internet no one knows you’re a dog. But now you can’t go anywhere without people knowing your pedigree, where you went to obedience school, and the status of your latest puppy love. What’s wrong with that, you ask? Well, I don’t know how you roll… but I personally spend a lot of my time on the Internet doing things that I’m not ashamed of in principle, but don’t want broadcast to my mom, former schoolmates, and coworkers. Mostly I’d just bore them to tears because almost nobody I know gives a rat’s ass about my obsessive love of Logan Couture of the San Jose Sharks, Showtime TV shows like LOOK, or photos of panda babies. But also… I admit that I waste a lot of time on the Web when I “should” be doing other things. If you put together all the time I’ve spent just looking up song lyrics, watching videos of kittens, and studying cupcake recipes—all perfectly innocent and life-affirming activities, I might add—some small-minded people might think badly of me. So imagine that every time you looked at any Web page, Facebook could tell all your friends what you were looking at in real time. Would you be OK with that? From a technical point of view, Facebook could do it right now. They have the data from a large percentage of the top websites; they just aren’t exposing it yet. When we talk about the benefits of anonymity, for the average person it amounts to their boss not knowing how much time they’re spending on fantasy football or shoe shopping at work. (Vibram Five Fingers for the win!) In Facebook’s march to a billion users by 2012, Facebook seems to be everywhere we Web users want to be. Someday soon more than half our Web page views could be on the Facebook-Enhanced Web (FEW) instead of the rest of the World-Wide Web (WWW) that Tim Berners-Lee gave to the world so we could roam it freely like pandas in the bamboo forest. Remember, the WWW consists of millions of websites, of which Facebook is now the world’s third biggest by unique users. However, if we measure by Web page views, Facebook is bigger than the next 99 websites combined, so the FEW is already huge. We the Web users have chosen the FEW over the WWW for what seem like good reasons: Facebook promises us a spam-free, porn-free, crime-free world where we can do everything with people we know in real life. Who wouldn’t want that? Proponents of a stable Web, for one. Facebook has spread its seed all over the Web now—with Facebook Connect and Share and Like buttons everywhere—so much that when Facebook goes down, the Web goes down. Facebook has bequeathed the WWW a single point of failure. Note that Facebook did this without being closed: they have APIs, and buttons, and export mechanisms. They’re not closed; they’ve just redefined open. I’ve made my peace with the idea that Facebook will be the biggest service on The Open Internet; what we all should want to avoid is a future where Facebook is the Web. That would be as lame as spending eternity in a 1971 Ford Pinto with all of your friends. Reliability issues aside, there’s a deeper principle at stake here. Facebook has divided the Web into two: the Web with Facebook (your friends), and the Web without Facebook (people cooler than your friends). Our friends are who we are All the time we spend looking at repetitive posts and photos from people we already know, could be spent instead on the Web meeting new people who are interested in the same things we are. In other words, making cooler friends. Ambient Findability, as I like to call it, means that what (and who!) we find changes who (and what!) we become. Enabling that is what has always made the Web great. So, in the spirit of One Web and Ambient Findability, I’m asking Facebook on behalf of all Web citizens to give us the benefits of being able to just look at things online without being tracked by you. Give us the option to treat Facebook like every other part of the Web, whenever we want, and I assure you it will benefit us all. Give us an easy one-click way to truly and totally disconnect from Facebook Connect whenever we want. I’ll still spend just as much time on Facebook, I promise! But now I won’t have to see my friends’ faces every time I look up a restaurant review on Yelp, read the news on the New York Times, or wait for external modules to load on TechCrunch. It’s just an option, and an option confers value… I’m sure the vast majority of users love Facebook Connect and will continue to use it. But having the option to return the rest of One Web to its pre-Facebook status—useful but not fundamentally social—would be the best gift that Zuck could give back to the Web. Editor’s note: Guest author Adam Rifkin is a Silicon Valley veteran who organizes a networking group for entrepreneurial engineers called 106 Miles. You can read his previous guest posts for TechCrunch here and follow him on Twitter @ifindkarma.        
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| With a New Version, FLUD Hopes to Take on Pulse And Flipboard as Your iPad News Reader Posted: 25 Dec 2010 07:40 PM PST
For the average web user, the traditional staid design and text-and-headline-heavy interface of the RSS feed and feed aggregators have offered user experiences to be endured rather than enjoyed. News apps for both the iPhone and iPad, like Pulse and Flipboard, have garnered quite a bit of attention of late for disrupting the aggregation and RSS reader experience by offering up new, intriguing ways of representing data. With interactive and clever designs that leave templates open enough to allow users to fill them with their own feeds and customized content, the publishing industry seems exciting again. The success of these apps is largely due to the fact that developers are learning that a good news reader relies, first and foremost, on design. It may make us feel a bit superficial, but it's true, with a seemingly never-ending supply of news, for aggregators and readers, it's all about image. Give me an aesthetically-pleasing news filter that sloughs off that long list of text and headlines in favor of an organic and interactive interface, and I'll show you an active (and happy) user. But when it comes to news consumption, I'd rather look to feeds emanating from editorially directed and curated magazines and websites, rather than a template populated by Facebook and Twitter such as Flipboard—or a design and user experience that is a bit sexier than Pulse—and I'd love to have quality versions on my iPhone (that have true staying power). This is why I've recently become a fan of FLUD, which allows users to plug in feeds from favorite sites (like TechCrunch, ahem) and read, peruse, and share articles through a neatly-presented, tile-based interface—for free. And unlike Flipboad, FLUD is on both the iPad and iPhone—and it's coming soon to Android and the desktop.
Tapping on the boxes, which can be scrolled through vertically or horizontally, brings the summary of the story into view, whereupon you can choose to view the basic text, switch to the web page, read it in your browser, or read offline. You can "love" particular stories, influencing items that other FLUD readers who use the same feeds will see and share your favorite links via Facebook and Twitter. With Flipboard recently being named the 2010 iPad app of the year by Apple, and as apps like Pulse continue to hold ground high in the App Store rankings, FLUD has some serious competition in the marketplace—adding to the pressure to incorporate social media feeds as actual sources of news, rather than simply means for sharing. Yet, as FLUD remains a boot-strapped enterprise at this point, the company has some ground to cover on apps like Flipboard, which already has $10.5 million in funding. Though FLUD Founder & CEO Bobby Ghoshal says that the app has been adding a new user every 4 seconds in December, drawbacks remain. I've experienced a lack of compatibility with older iPhones (3GS and earlier) and some serious delays in loading as you move content around; these lags and glitches manifesting themselves in the daily FLUD experience will need to be fixed if the company expects to build on its early success. As to how FLUD hopes to become profitable in 2011—a question many free news and media-oriented apps must answer—Ghoshal says that FLUD is intent on staying away from ads as a primary source of revenue, hoping to encourage potentially different models, like revenue sharing built through partnerships with publishers and local businesses in an effort to incentivize users to buy locally. That sounds like a stretch—a news aggregator subsisting on anything other than ads may be a pipe dream—but who knows? Nonetheless, if it figures out its revenue model revenue models, FLUD may be establishing itself as a force to be reckoned with in the news feed arena. Next up: the addition of a rating system (like the one available in iTunes), and an increased focus on social media feeds.        
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| Santa Brings Bump Its Biggest Day Of Sharing Ever, Swapping 20 Photos A Second Posted: 25 Dec 2010 07:36 PM PST
Bump CEO David Lieb says that Bump’s traffic is currently 2.4 times as high as it was a week ago, and that the service is on pace for 2 million shared items today, with a peak load of 30 items per second (in addition to swapping photos, you can share music, contact information, and calendar events using Bump). These numbers are especially interesting for one big reason — Lieb says this is the first time the company has disclosed any traffic stats at all. Granted, the data obviously isn’t representative of Bump’s daily average, but it still gives some context about usage of the service. For those that haven’t used it, Bump lets you quickly swap data between two phones by simply tapping them together (both phones obviously have to be running the Bump application). Bump’s applications have been downloaded 25 million times across the iPhone and Android since the service launched. Lieb says that even aside from today’s big numbers, Bump usage is on the rise. This has been driven in part by the launch of music sharing in November (which is already the second most-shared type of file, behind photos). And last Saturday the service enabled ‘long-distance connections’, which lets you exchange messages with friends in your address book and from Facebook, without having to actually physically ‘bump’ your phone with them.        
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| UWall.Tv Turns YouTube Into Your Own MTV Posted: 25 Dec 2010 06:33 PM PST
Once you set it motion, Uwall.tv plays your search-derived playlist chronologically without you having to refresh, whether you’re in full screen mode or not. Vaggi plans on creating more music categories and listing albums as well as artists and songs. UWall.Tv is a simple solution for all those holiday parties spent drunkenly fumbling around YouTube for Jonathan Mann’s Greatest Hits. Take advantage of it while (or “if “for those in non-copyright compatible countries) you still can.        
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| Flickr Should Have Built Instagram. But They Didn’t. Here’s Why. Posted: 25 Dec 2010 06:00 PM PST
Specifically, someone asked the question: Why did Flickr miss the mobile photo opportunity that Instagram and picplz are pursuing? The mobile photo space is red-hot right now with several players beyond the two mentioned vying to become a common app on smartphones. And one of them, Instagram, was able to gain over a million users in less than three months. So why wasn’t Flickr, with all the resources of Yahoo behind them, able to dominate this space first? The simple answer, according to Elliot-McCrea, is “Innovator’s dilemma”. That is, if Flickr had wanted to create a successful service that leveraged Twitter’s social graph, they would have had to sacrifice their own login system for that of Twitter’s — which until more recently was considered very insecure. “The Yahoo! Paranoids would have shut us down in a heart beat,” Elliot-McCrea says. This is clearly a pain point for Elliot-McCrea as he was instrumental in creating the OAuth standard that Twitter and many other service now use to allow for third-party link-ups. So Flickr and Twitter linking up via OAuth should have happened right away, right? Nope. According to Elliot-McCrea, it took about two years — something which he detailed here. But even with that link-up in place, there were several other factors that stopped Flickr from creating an Instagram-like service or experience. “Additionally we fell into the trap of thinking like an incumbent, we spent 6 months off and on talking to Twitter about preferred product placement rather then just shipping the integration we had built,” Elliot-McCrea writes. “We also spent *years* debating whether or not to build iPhone apps/iPhone optimized sites or bet on a HTML5/multi-device strategy,” he continues. He also specifically calls out one Yahoo executive, Marco Boerries, as being particularly responsible for Yahoo’s lack of leadership in the mobile space. “Several Flickr internal attempts to build and ship native mobile experiences (going back to 2006) were squashed relentlessly. The Flickr iPhone app that eventually shipped was built by CL (Boerries “Connected Life” team),” Elliot-McCrea notes. That is very much in line with a story I heard a few years ago that Yahoo was “rushing” to get a native app done for Flickr to secure the hot iPhone photo-sharing space. Instead, they dragged their feet and it took another year or so to get it out there. So is this Yahoo’s failure? Another Quora answer by Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield sheds a bit of light on that. While the question asked isn’t directly related to the Flickr/Instagram idea, it is related to innovation at Flickr: Would Flickr have been more innovative since their acquisition if it had been Google that acquired them? “Impossible to know, but my instinct is that it would have made no difference. The problem at Yahoo! was being starved for resources and I’m pretty sure that would have happened at Google too,” Butterfield writes. Elliot-McCrea also cautions that it wasn’t entirely Yahoo’s fault for missing the opportunity — as most people did. He cites a service called Radar as one that was trying to do something similar to the current mobile photo-sharing craze but never caught on. I know Radar well, I glowingly wrote about the service back in January of 2009, and loved their yes — Flickr — integration a couple months later. But they did fail to catch on, and their parent, Tiny Pictures, was sold to Shutterfly for a small price later in 2009. And going forward: “It would actually be incredibly straightforward to build something like an Instagram on top of Flickr using the API, especially if you could convince Flickr to release an API to “Beehive” the friend finder tool, which among other things, benefits from Y! backdoor deal with Facebook,” Elliot-McCrea says. The problem now is that Yahoo seems much more interested in “sunsetting” services to reduce costs rather than actually building new things once again. And that really, really worries me with regard to Flickr. We’ve heard some unconfirmed whispers of outside parties interested in purchasing the photo-sharing service from Yahoo. Given some of the light Elliot-McCrea just shed on internal workings there, perhaps we can only hope there’s something to those rumors.        
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| Happy Birthday: Jesus Is almost Bigger than Angry Birds (TCTV) Posted: 25 Dec 2010 09:00 AM PST
Today it runs on eight platforms, is in the top ten iTunes apps overall and has more than 12 million users across eight mobile platforms. It was bigger than Angry Birds at the time we shot the video below, and then Angry Birds had a great December. But hey, close to Angry Birds is still pretty good. Those users have logged some four billion minutes reading the Bible inside the app, and the engagement is growing. The Church behind it, LifeChurch, thinks its users will log one billion more reading minutes in January alone. Apparently, January is a good time for evangelicals for the same reason it’s good for gyms: People are reflecting on the year ahead and making all sorts of resolutions to be a better person. Maybe it can catch up with the Birds once again? I can’t say I get many pitches about Christian iPhone apps, so we caught up with Bobby Gruenewald to get more info on what the Bible is like in the 21st century. The application has leveraged social media in some interesting ways, but I was most impressed that Gruenewald convinced publishers to let his company offer a digital version for free. (Maybe Spotify should give Gruenewald a call?) YouVersion sees the mission as a spiritual not a money-making one. But given the uptake, there’s certainly an opportunity for someone to make money here.        
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As every iPhone developer knows, Christmas Day is the busiest day of the year, as millions of people unwrap their shiny new iPhones and promptly go on an app download spree (I’m sure Android sees a similar phenomenon). Which means it isn’t terribly surprising when 
Frustrated with how difficult it is to search 
Back in June, 
How do you get more kids reading the Bible? The so-called | You are subscribed to email updates from TechCrunch To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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