The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Facebook Gives Seedcamp Startups Similar VIP Access As Y Combinator’s
- Pulse Updates iPhone And Android Apps With Social Feeds, Improved Sharing, More Sources
- #REDALLOVER: Nike Leans On Twitter To Design New USA Men’s Soccer Kit
- Now You Can Shop For Shoes From Anywhere With The Zappos Android App
- Search Is Google’s Castle, Everything Else Is A Moat
- Twimal: Super-Cute Twitter Toy Pet Reads Tweets For You
- Flurry Launches Support Program For Game Developers, Nabs Director From Playfish
- Hybrid Cloud Hosting Startup Voxel Raises $5.5 Million
- Encoding.com Opens Vid.ly – A Single URL For Videos You Can Watch Anywhere
- Nuclear WatchDawg App Reveals Nuclear Plants, Safety Issues Within Fifty Mile Radius
- Sorry Mike, No Sonos Controller For Android Until Next Month
- Is Apple Too Quick To Shut Down Potentially Hacked Accounts?
- Spotify Turns Off Third-Party Display Ads Following Malware Attacks
- Yellow Media Sells Vertical Media Publishing Subsidiary For $745 Million In Cash
- Take A Deep Breath Google, Facebook Isn’t Doing Search Just Yet
- Seattle Startup Thinkfuse Scores $500k By Hanging Around During Y Combinator Demo Day
- Podio Is Like A Yammer With Its Own App Store And App Builder
- In Amazon’s Android Appstore, Fat-Fingering Will Cost You — Literally
- AT&T Broadband Metering Is Shoddy And They Know It
- Video: ShopSquad’s CEO Explains Their Personal Shopper Network
- Digital Polling Utility CivicScience Scores $1.2 Million In Seed Funding
- Easy Cash!? Google Beats ‘Google Money’ Scammers, Is Awarded $1.6 Million
- Record Industry: Limewire Could Owe $75 Trillion – Judge: “Absurd”
- Marketing Intelligence Service Motista Raises $4.5 Million in Series A
- Find The Best Stuff Around You With Village Voice Media’s “Best Of …” App
| Facebook Gives Seedcamp Startups Similar VIP Access As Y Combinator’s Posted: 25 Mar 2011 09:33 AM PDT
Today Facebook is announcing a partnership with European startup accelerator and fund Seedcamp. Seedcamp startups will receive product, technical, and design support as well as early access to beta products and programs on the Facebook Platform.        
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| Pulse Updates iPhone And Android Apps With Social Feeds, Improved Sharing, More Sources Posted: 25 Mar 2011 08:44 AM PDT
Pulse, which is developed by Alphonso Labs, launched last year via an iPad app as a more seamless (and visually appealing) way to read your RSS feeds. But recently, Pulse ditched RSS in favor of hooking up with APIs to access content. Pulse's home screen renders stories from your feeds on a dynamic mosaic interface and via a touch interface, allows you to swipe up and down to see headlines from various sources, and right and left to browse stories from a particular source. Pulse users can now bring in their news from 60 sources as opposed to 20 sources previously. And the developer has improved the speed and performance of the app with faster image loading, three times the load speed, and more. While you could previously share content on Facebook and Twitter, you can now pull in content from your social networks and platforms including Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, Digg, Reddit and Hacker News (it doesn’t appear to integrate with Twitter yet). The app specifically has an in depth integration with Facebook, allowing you to like and comment on news that is posted within the Facebook feed. This was previously added to the iPad app. Users can auto-populate an entire page of news within the apps with multiple sources for politics, finance, sports, or other subjects. With this update, Pulse is playing catch up to Flipboard, which populates articles and images your social streams like Twitter and Facebook, and presents them in a visually appealing, magazine-like format. But Pulse says that smartphone users now account for nearly 70 percent of Pulse's total installs and is actively going after the mobile market as well as tablets.        
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| #REDALLOVER: Nike Leans On Twitter To Design New USA Men’s Soccer Kit Posted: 25 Mar 2011 08:20 AM PDT Team USA play Argentina tomorrow at the New Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey, and while we’re all excited to see Messi & Co. pretty much run circles around the team, at least our boys will look good in the process. Nike continues to supply the United States Men’s National Team with its official kit, and once again there are a few improvements worth highlighting. So let’s do just that now. First off, it’s red! Yes, Nike has finally produced a red kit, to go along its usual white (home) and blue (away) designs. That’s not really tech-y, no, but it’s probably the first thing you’ll notice. Nike says it created the red kit in response to fan demand: USA, home of the red, white, and blue, so where’s the red? Along those lines.        
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| Now You Can Shop For Shoes From Anywhere With The Zappos Android App Posted: 25 Mar 2011 08:15 AM PDT
Similar to the online retailer’s iPhone and iPad apps, you can search, browse, read reviews, share, and buy shoes, handbags, clothing, jewelry and more via the app. Purchasers get the same benefits of shopping on Zappos.com, including a 365-day return policy and 24-7 customer support. Of course, Zappos is known for its customer service and has a dedicated team covering support for mobile sales. Zappos is owned by e-commerce giant Amazon, who bought the retail site for for $1.2 billion in 2009. It’s no secret that parent company Amazon is bullish on mobile commerce, and has launched a number of mobile apps that enable a more seamless shopping experience on the go. Zappos only launched its iPhone and iPad apps in late 2010, so the retailer is still relatively new to the mobile market. But considering the rise of m-commerce and the popularity of Zappos’ shopping portal, I’m going to guess that its mobile apps will be a hit.        
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| Search Is Google’s Castle, Everything Else Is A Moat Posted: 25 Mar 2011 07:51 AM PDT Google is moving in many directions—mobile, browsers, productivity apps, operating systems, social. At first glance, it may seem like it is trying ever so hard to move beyond its giant one-trick pony: search. What people keep forgetting is that it is a pretty good trick. Benchmark Capital VC Bill Gurley reminds us how good this trick is in an excellent post that looks at Google’s market expansion strategy not as one of a series of aggressive offensives, but rather a highly defensive strategy. Warren Buffet famously describes the best businesses as “economic castles protected by unbreachable 'moats.'” Search is Google’s economic castle (perhaps with other forms of online advertising such as display thrown in there), and everything else is a moat trying to protect that castle. Android is a moat. The Chrome browser is a moat. The Chrome OS is a moat. Google Apps is a moat. These are all free products, subsidized by search profits, that are intended to protect the economic castle that is search. Gurley goes further and says not only does Google build moats around itself, but then it scorches the earth surrounding the moat:
Remember, what is the default search engine of Android and Chrome? It’s Google. Android and Chrome are merely distribution nodes feeding into search. Without Android, Google would be more vulnerable to becoming displaced as the default search engine on mobile phones. The Chrome browser similarly keeps Google search front and center, just in case Firefox ever decides to go with Bing. But the way that Google creates its moats, ravages the industries it enters because it offers it products for free or less than free. Carriers and cell phone manufacturers actually have an economic incentive to use Android. Google is essentially paying them to adopt it. So don’t measure the success of Google’s new businesses by how much revenue or profit they generate directly. Measure it by how much they shore up Google’s core search business.        
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| Twimal: Super-Cute Twitter Toy Pet Reads Tweets For You Posted: 25 Mar 2011 07:07 AM PDT Japan is crazy about Twitter, and today local toy maker Takara Tomy has announced Twimal (short for “Twitter Animal”) [JP], a super-cute toy “pet” that can reads out tweets loud for you. The white version does this with a female voice, while the blue Twimal uses a male voice.        
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| Flurry Launches Support Program For Game Developers, Nabs Director From Playfish Posted: 25 Mar 2011 07:00 AM PDT
However, it seems digital gaming companies didn’t receive that particular memo. Following on the heels of yesterday’s announcement that monetization and distribution platform Tapjoy will be launching a publishing platform to support game developers, while investing significant capital in early-stage game development, Flurry declared that it will be following suit. The mobile analytics firm subsequently unveiled its Game Acceleration Program for iOS and Android platforms, which will provide participating partners with a full suite of development and marketing support, including analytics, game design and development assistance, financing, The difference between Flurry’s approach and traditional publishing models, however, is that the firm will not solicit ownership of an app’s IP or the intellectual property of a title. Instead, in exchange for the program’s development and launch support, app makers will be asked to use Flurry AppCircle, the company’s app recommendation engine, until agreed upon costs are recouped. "Flurry reaches over 40 million active consumers each day through Flurry AppCircle, and we want to help companies of all sizes better reach and monetize that audience", said CEO Simon Khalaf. In the context of the arms race in mobile gaming and app development, Flurry’s program isn’t markedly different from that of Tapjoy or other competitors like OpenFeint and Scoreloop. Each platform offers app developers some kind of compensation or incentive up front to stoke the flames of their hearts. Under Flurry’s program, if gamers download the app recommended by AppCircle, the firm makes money from the transaction. Of course, according to VP of Marketing Peter Farago, the amount of loot that ultimately ends up in developers’ pockets will likely be fairly small.
Valadares must be an important piece of the puzzle, considering Flurry nabbed him from social game maker Playfish, where he was working as the startup’s studio director. The fact that Flurry pulled in $15 million in VC funding back in December likely didn’t hurt its cause. The Brazilian game developer has an impressive resume, having been involved in the making of award-winning games like Tornado Mania, Nightclub Empire, Crazy Penguin Catapult, Brickbreaker Revolution, Kamikaze Robots, and Tower Bloxx. Before Playfish, Valadares was at both Electronic Arts and Digital Chocolate and worked on brands such as FIFA, Harry Potter, and Need for Speed. His teams have shipped a combined total of more than 40 titles, won multiple developer of the year awards and 14 game of the year awards. He’s clearly terrible at what he does, and there’s no way developers will be eager to work with him. All in all, these announcements seem to be great plays for Flurry, and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what the firm produces under Valadares’ leadership. I bet there will be a few gems. Of course, I’m not a betting man.        
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| Hybrid Cloud Hosting Startup Voxel Raises $5.5 Million Posted: 25 Mar 2011 06:54 AM PDT
Voxel delivers high-performance on-demand managed hosting infrastructure services over its own global IP network and content delivery network. The startup’s services include on-demand physical and virtual cloud servers, content delivery networks, and application hosting. Founded in 1999, Voxel currently has over 1,000 clients. The new funding round will used to support increased sales activities and accelerate the deployment of services both in the U.S. and in international markets.        
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| Encoding.com Opens Vid.ly – A Single URL For Videos You Can Watch Anywhere Posted: 25 Mar 2011 06:44 AM PDT Video encoding service provider Encoding.com this morning announced that it is opening the beta version of its Vid.ly video URL service to the public. In a world littered with an enormous variety of smartphones, tablet computers and browsers, it’s not easy for publishers to put up a video online that can be watched by anyone, anywhere. After all, different devices and web browsers require different video codecs and screen sizes, which means videos need to be converted into many different formats and sizes as well. With vid.ly, Encoding.com aims to alleviate that problem by enabling publishers to create what it refers to as a ‘universal video URL’, designed to play videos everywhere. If you want to try it out, check out the company’s own demo video. Since it was released in private beta at the end of January 2011, the company says several thousand beta users generated over 10,000 Vid.ly URLs by uploading their source videos via the dedicated website, where anyone can now sign up. Watch Erick Schonfeld’s earlier interview with Encoding.com president Jeff Malkin here:        
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| Nuclear WatchDawg App Reveals Nuclear Plants, Safety Issues Within Fifty Mile Radius Posted: 25 Mar 2011 06:40 AM PDT
NuclearWatchDawg aggregates data from some 30 sources, mostly government and academic research labs whose research is in the public domain. Lee Guthman, who develops new apps and ventures for the GVW Group in Highland Park, Illinois noted:
According to a report today by Steve Herman for VOA News:
Emission of radioactive vapor from one complex led to warnings about Japan’s water supply, and raised safety concerns and international scrutiny of Japanese vegetables, milk and seafood, and possibly other exports. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it is blocking imports from the region in Japan where the nuclear accident occurred, for example. The crisis has forced farmers to destroy crops there, NPR reported. [Ed's note: TechCrunch's Jon Evans published a story suggesting mainstream media's coverage of the nuclear situation in Japan is tantamount to "hysteria," but offered a guide to sites he trusted instead. It's worth checking out the links he's provided to independent media sources that he trusts for technically accurate perspectives.] The Nuclear Watchdawg app is meant for those who are curious about the impacts of nuclear power near where they live and work in the U.S., or who might be buying or selling a home, or moving a business nearby. Like GVW’s other sites and apps, Nuclear Watchdawg is ad-supported (via AdMob) but free to get and use. Guthman said his firm will likely develop other, GPS-enabled Watchdawg apps based on consumers’ major environmental and safety concerns. For the next release of Nuclear Watchdawg app (due out before the end of May) his team plans to include alert features to let users know when there is a new development, or problem at a nuclear facility in their area, and direct them as to recommended safety measures. On a much lighter note, the firm previously developed the virtual vuvuzela app, released during the last World Cup Soccer tournament, attaining 1 million downloads within thirty days, with 29 percent of the downloads from the U.S. and 14 percent in Japan. GVW Group in Highland Park, Illinois is a non-traditional investment group (or diversified holding company) that develops apps and websites, then spins out and funds new startups around those that have made a strong impact within a niche, or proven very popular. The company also makes clean tech and energy investments, and is a primary stakeholder of Autocar, LLC a maker of garbage trucks that run on natural gas, and iClunkIt the company behind GreenOhm.com, a site and service matching consumers to rebates and incentives for energy-efficient appliances, and home energy systems.        
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| Sorry Mike, No Sonos Controller For Android Until Next Month Posted: 25 Mar 2011 06:24 AM PDT Finally! Sonos To Release Android Controller App In March, exclaimed an understandably excited Michael Arrington back in February. Alas, bad news has just come in for my boss and many other Android handset owning Sonos users. According to the company, testing of the Sonos Controller for Android is taking a bit longer than they’d anticipated, which means they will not make that March deadline after all. The latest addition to its free controller line-up won't arrive until April. The horror. “But when it does, it is going to rock", said Andrew Schulert, VP of Quality at Sonos.        
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| Is Apple Too Quick To Shut Down Potentially Hacked Accounts? Posted: 25 Mar 2011 05:29 AM PDT
Mike’s account was hacked in January of this year and $80 worth of iTunes cash drained from his account. This is similar to the hack that occurred over the summer resulting in “about 400″ hacked accounts and continues even to this month as evidenced by this thread in Apple Support. Mike writes:
       
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| Spotify Turns Off Third-Party Display Ads Following Malware Attacks Posted: 25 Mar 2011 05:11 AM PDT Some users of the free, ad-supported version of digital music service Spotify are getting hit by malware-based attacks, reported The Register earlier today, echoing a report from Netcraft. Netcraft explains that at least one attack used a Java exploit to drop malicious executable code on a victim’s computer, with security software identifying one of the malicious payloads as Trojan horse Generic_r.FZ. According to Spotify’s Twitter feed, an investigation is underway – the startup just told users it turned off all third-party display ads until it finds which ad triggered the attacks. As always, make sure the security software you run locally to protect your from viruses and malware is completely up-to-date.        
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| Yellow Media Sells Vertical Media Publishing Subsidiary For $745 Million In Cash Posted: 25 Mar 2011 04:52 AM PDT Canadian Internet conglomerate Yellow Media is selling its vertical media publishing business Trader Corporation to funds advised by Apax Partners for a total purchase price consideration of $745 million, payable in cash at closing. Trader, formed in June 2006 with the integration of Classified Media Holdings and Trader Media and acquired by Yellow Media shortly thereafter, publishes approximately 160 publications and 22 websites covering four product verticals: automotive, real estate, general merchandise and employment. Its online properties attract close to 3.5 million unique visitors per month. After the transaction is completed, Trader will continue to own and operate Canadian automotive and other online properties, including AutoTrader.ca, Autos.ca, AutoHebdo.net, and BuySell.com, as well as 74 related publications. Trader will also retain its interest of approximately 30% in Dealer.com, the US digital solutions provider to the automotive dealer segment. The real estate, employment and LesPAC.com businesses will continue to be owned and managed by Yellow Media. Yellow Media expects to close the sale in June 2011, which is as usual subject to regulatory approvals and other customary conditions. Proceeds from the divestiture will be used by Yellow Media in part to reduce indebtedness and for ‘general corporate purposes’. Marc P. Tellier, President and CEO of Yellow Media, commented:
TD Securities and Morgan Stanley acted as financial advisors to Yellow Media.        
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| Take A Deep Breath Google, Facebook Isn’t Doing Search Just Yet Posted: 24 Mar 2011 11:17 PM PDT I can imagine this post, titled “Facebook Testing Web Search Box At Top Of Site” was flying around Google’s cubicles today. Probably with a few expletives attached as commentary. This certainly wouldn’t be unprecedented. They targeted Microsoft years ago with their online Office competitor, and Microsoft fired back with Bing and seems to be quite willing to invest billions of dollars for as long as it takes to grab search share from Google. Now Google is targeting Facebook with their social efforts. There’s no reason at all why Facebook wouldn’t go into search. For us users, it’s all good. Competition brings better products to the market at lower prices. And Google needs more competition in search. But…phew! The screenshot that All Facebook got is a fake, or the result of third party software messing with a user’s browser (my guess is photoshop is the culprit). So take it down to DEFCON 2, Google, Facebook isn’t launching search just yet.
       
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| Seattle Startup Thinkfuse Scores $500k By Hanging Around During Y Combinator Demo Day Posted: 24 Mar 2011 10:58 PM PDT
One smart Seattle startup called Thinkfuse took advantage of all that investor focus by traveling to Silicon Valley last week, right before the demo day. And in less than a week they closed their own angel round – $500,000 – from investors like Ali and Hadi Partovi, SV Angel, Founder’s Co-op, Scott Banister and other angels. The company is still in private trials with select users, but they’re focused on the enterprise space. “If you’re still using email or sharepoint for status reports, we’re here to save you,” says the website. For now, that’s all they’re saying. Other startups were also in town, clearly to jump into the Y Combinator parade. But Thinkfuse happily admits it. “We knew over 40 companies would be unveiled this week, so we showed up a week before,” says CEO Aydin Ghajar. Brilliant.        
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| Podio Is Like A Yammer With Its Own App Store And App Builder Posted: 24 Mar 2011 08:00 PM PDT Like a souped up Yammer with its own App store attached, Danish online workspace Podio launches to the public today after two years of being in beta. In the same space as Box.net and 37Signals, Podio aims to be a complete work platform for enterprise — sort of like all inclusive web-based Intranet for companies. Founded by Anders Pollas, Jon Froda and Kasper Hultin, the Danish startup took up Tommy Ahlers (who is best known for selling ZYB to Vodafone in 2008) as a CEO and investor in August, all in all raking in $4.5M in funding. The principle behind Podio is that all work tasks, from expense reports to hiring, happen within the app — And unlike the more social networking focused collaboration platforms, on Podio, you don’t follow users but Spaces. To create a new Space on Podio, click on New Space, name the Space (TechCrunch, for example) and invite users. Each Space comes with baseline fields for Activity, Contacts, Calendar and Tasks and an Add App link at the top left. Your profile on Podio allows you to see your Frequently Used Spaces, Contacts and Calendar on the right, with an activity stream of all actions on the left. To visit a space you click on its name and you can view all actions in the activity stream, including inline files as well custom widgets that you add with the Add Widget button. While it’s somewhat unwieldy from a design standpoint (It will take you a long time to figure out where every thing is on Podio) Podio’s killer app in a sense is its Add App button at the top navigation bar. What differentiates Podio from the rest of the contenders in the space is this option, which leads to a Podio App store (for a more detailed explanation of why the App Store is a boon, check out Stowe Boyd’s analysis here). In the Podio App store, users can add App bundles for specific workflow purposes like a CRM Management tool, Project Management tool or individual Apps like like Candidates, an app to manage job candidates, Twitter, an app to monitor tweets and Bugs, an app for internal bug reporting. If one of the 200 Apps in the store or a modified version doesn’t fulfill your workflow need, Podio allows workers to custom build their own apps, mixing and matching modules like a status box, fields for notes, and fields to upload images. Already scooping up clients like Greenpeace, InMobi and Rebate Networks, Podio has hit the ground running in terms of appealing to users; “Instead of using a cumbersome combination of Yammer, Box.net and SharePoint, we just use Podio – and get all those functionalities in one place" InMobi Biz Dev VP Amit Gupta raves. Jeez. The service will monetize on a freemium, and is currently free for companies with 10 and under users. The premium prixing begins at 99.99 a month for up to 25 users. Podio itself currently has 20,000 users, 8,000 organizations registered, and more than 10,000 seats sold on the system so far. iPhone and Android Apps are also available and an Air App is in the works for those that prefer desktop clients.        
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| In Amazon’s Android Appstore, Fat-Fingering Will Cost You — Literally Posted: 24 Mar 2011 06:07 PM PDT
You might not think this is a big deal because while the Android Market gives you 15 minutes to get a refund (down from 24 hours) Apple’s App Store also technically doesn’t have an app refund process (though you can get one if you jump through some hoops). But there’s a big-little difference between the App Store and the Appstore (besides the tiny name difference, that is): an entire click. In the App Store, it’s actually two clicks to buy an app. You first click click on the price, and then the button turns into the bright green “Buy Now” button. It’s only after this second click that the transaction happens. This more or less stops mis-clicks. Further, if you haven’t been browsing the store in a while, they’ll prompt you to re-enter your password before you complete a purchase. In the Appstore (again, Amazon’s version), it is literally one click. If you touch the screen in the wrong place — whoops — you just bought an app. Of course, this is assuming you have one-click purchasing turned on. But if you do on the web, you will in the Appstore. That’s what happened to me. It’s super-convenient when it works. And super-annoying when you make a mistake. On Amazon’s website, one-click is great because it greatly speeds up the buying process. But since most of the things you buy on the website are tangible things that have to be shipped, it’s relatively easy to cancel a mis-click. Not so in the Appstore where there is nothing to ship. And it wouldn’t be a huge deal except for the fact that Amazon isn’t offering app refunds. How do I know? Because after some digging on Amazon’s website to figure out how to possibly get a refund, I had to send an email about my erroneous charge. (For the record, they did erase my charge, but indicated that they were making a one-time exception in doing so.) Long story short, if you’re prone to mis-clicking on touchscreen, make sure one-click purchases are turned off on Amazon. Otherwise it will cost you — literally.        
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| AT&T Broadband Metering Is Shoddy And They Know It Posted: 24 Mar 2011 05:01 PM PDT
Readers over at Broadband Reports are noticing marked differences between AT&T’s measurements and their own. One user found differences of several orders of magnitude. Now, if AT&T (and of course Comcast and others) are unwilling to allow for wiggle room in their GB caps (fees start the byte over 250GB), why should we allow wiggle room in their measurement? After all, we don’t let grocers use poorly (or maliciously) calibrated scales.        
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| Video: ShopSquad’s CEO Explains Their Personal Shopper Network Posted: 24 Mar 2011 04:38 PM PDT Yesterday we wrote about ShopSquad, a new startup that looks to use the web to connect shoppers with expert shopping assistants. The company just closed $1.25 million in seed funding, with participants in the round including Josh Silverman (former CEO of Skype and Shopping.com), David Sacks (former COO of PayPal, CEO of Yammer), Jeff Fluhr (founder and former CEO of StubHub), Selina Tobaccowala (founder of Evite.com) and Charles Carmel (VP Corporate Development at Cisco). In light of the news, we invited ShopSquad CEO Charles Katz to stop by our TechCrunch TV studio so that we could ask him a few questions about the new service. Check out the video interview above, in which I ask Katz to outline how ShopSquad works, and how the site plans to make sure that its advisers really know their stuff. I also briefly discuss my summer working at Office Depot. Tune in!        
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| Digital Polling Utility CivicScience Scores $1.2 Million In Seed Funding Posted: 24 Mar 2011 04:12 PM PDT Pittsburgh-based startup CivicScience, an intelligent polling utility that offers a host of audience measurement and analytics tools for publishers and advertisers, has raised $1.2 million in seed funding from a group of institutional and angel investors to expand its platform partnerships and automation technology as well as ramp up its hiring efforts. The seed round’s investors include marketing research company, The NPD Group, national polling company ALR, and Kevin McClatchy, director of The McClatchy Company and former owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The seed round adds to the $1.6 million in funding the startup has already raised, bringing total investment to $2.8 million. “Another polling startup?” you may ask in exasperation. Yes. (And personally, speaking non-objectively, my allegiance is with GoPollGo, the addictive and hilarious brainchild of former TechCrunch developer, Ben Schaechter.) But seeing as CivicScience is currently polling 11 million people per month and its software is being used by organizations like The International Brotherhood of Teamsters and The National Rifle Association, the startup shouldn’t be offhandedly dismissed. (Unless of course you want to be haunted by the ghost of Charlton Heston.) Headquartered not far from Carnegie Mellon University, CivicScience has close ties to the top computer science school, as the software behind the service was developed by a team of engineering graduates and many of its staffers are alumni. How does it work? CivicScience’s technology uses an API and customized widgets to plug into the types of polls commonly found on many third-party websites, social networks, and mobile platforms. This means that CivicScience polls integrate easily with those you may already be running on your site. Or, if you’re not currently on the polling bandwagon, the startup’s designers will build polls that match the look and feel of your site. The technology can deliver up to three (owner-approved) poll questions to users each time they visit. It then uses impressive-sounding things like machine learning and predictive modeling algorithms to identify return users and collect statistics based on those visitors in order to build rich (but anonymous) profiles over time. Those profiles are broken down into categories and demographics and show brand and issue preferences — the stuff that’s valuable to marketers and ad wizard-types. As the startup uses its technology to build a database of visitor data and poll responses, it also provides you with a custom dashboard containing tools for viewing, analyzing, and sharing this data with your sales team, advertisers — and even your mom. CivicScience licenses its technology to publishers at no cost, so how does it make money? The startup’s business model is based on selling syndicated and custom research products from the data it collects from its partner sites. According to CivicScience CEO John Dick, a network of distribution partners then sell the aggregate data into retail, financial services, public affairs, and other verticals. If and when it uses your anonymous audience data in a paid report, he said, you get a revenue share. Pretty cool. The startup initially targeted major newspaper websites, blog networks, and niche content sites with its technology, but with its new funding round, CivicScience plans to build on polling work it had already done for the Republican National Committee site, expanding to include brands, government agencies, political sites, educational institutions, and more. The startup’s tech seems like it would be great for the many ad-supported sites out there, who, by nature, are all looking to get a better sense of who their customers are and what blows their hair back, so to speak. As long as the polls are designed well and aren’t springing onto unsuspecting visitors every other second — in other words, if they’re annoying — then this could be a nifty tool for your site. Update: The CivicScience Team has provided me with this Onion-esque parody of their funding announcement. It’s hilarious and is required reading for everyone. Enjoy.        
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| Easy Cash!? Google Beats ‘Google Money’ Scammers, Is Awarded $1.6 Million Posted: 24 Mar 2011 03:00 PM PDT
Back in December 2009, Google filed suit against a number of scamming rings that were rampantly promoting sites promising “Easy Cash with Google” (of course, they offered nothing of the sort). Now the courts are siding with the search giant, ordering the rings to cease their behavior and to pay Google $1.6 million. Today’s order, which applies to Bloosky.com, Just Think Media, Crush, Hyper Interactive, Viable, and Search 4 Profit, states that the entities are henceforth permanently forbidden to, among other things, “[make] any false representation, or [perform] any act or thing likely to induce the mistaken belief, that Google has in any way approved or is affiliated with, connect to or associated with any of the Enjoined Parties…” In other words, Google won. Google also won a similar injunction against Pacific WebWorks last June. Here’s today’s court order:        
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| Record Industry: Limewire Could Owe $75 Trillion – Judge: “Absurd” Posted: 24 Mar 2011 02:59 PM PDT
The record companies suing Limewire were asked to estimate the damages that should be paid by the file-sharing service. Their estimate? $400 Billion on the low end, and at the high end — $75 trillion dollars. That’s more than the GDP of the entire world. The judge, in a refreshing stroke of good sense, deemed these potential damages “absurd” and the plaintiff’s approach “untenable”.        
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| Marketing Intelligence Service Motista Raises $4.5 Million in Series A Posted: 24 Mar 2011 02:41 PM PDT
Motista also announced that it will be bringing its headquarters to Silicon Valley, relocating operations from Maryland to San Mateo, CA. Founded in 2007, Motista aims to develop consumer data and connection metrics in an effort to provide marketers with more intelligent ways to help brands reach their customers. Which is another way of saying that the startup surveys and collects data on consumer habits, allowing your business to access reports on what kind of products your customers are buying and why — as well as how to better target them. The company was created on the notion that marketing companies still rely heavily on traditional research methods and outside consultants to build profiles of their customers, and doesn’t typically provide useful analysis of the many customer interaction channels introduced by Web and social media. To address these industry shortcomings, Motista built a realtime consumer intelligence database by performing large-scale studies with consumer anthropologists across a variety of verticals and interviewing thousands of consumers for background data, according to Motista co-founder Alan Zorfas. The startup continues to survey thousands of consumers in an effort to provide its customers with up-to-date consumer intelligence. Building on its database of consumer research, Motista’s consumer connection platform provides marketers with the ability to see, for example, whether or not the people following their business on social networks have a stronger connection to their brand — and if they actually buy more of the product as a result. The startup’s web-based app also enables marketers to answer questions, test and justify hypotheses, view their highest performing connections, and explore competitor data. The baseline for a year-long subscription to Motista is $75K, which includes consumer connection intelligence specific to the purchasing brand, its category, and two competitors. Zorfas claims this is comparable to the cost of one custom research study. With its new round of funding, the startup plans to expand its staff of 12 and ramp up hiring. The company will be also be launching a widely available version of its product later this year. Stay tuned. For more on Motista, check out the video below:        
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| Find The Best Stuff Around You With Village Voice Media’s “Best Of …” App Posted: 24 Mar 2011 02:12 PM PDT
With “Best Of ..,” VVM has taken its already existant “Happy Hours” and “City Guides” apps one step further, partnering up again with GoTime in order to create an recommendations app that utilizes the premium content produced for VVM’s yearly “Best Of” issue. Just open the GPS-enabled app in order to get editorially-curated local recommendations in the Food and Drink, Arts & Entertainment, Sports and Recreation, and Shopping/Services categories. For those of you unaware, the Village Voice Media “Best Of” issues come out once a year and features staff writers and freelancers highlighting quirky things in each city, like “Best Marijuana Delivery Service,”"Best Dog Friendly Gym,” or “Best Curly Haircut.” Like a Michelin Guide for things that are cool, “Best Of” is like having the knowledge of a bunch of really city-savvy friends at your disposal, and now at your finger tips. The “Best Of …” app allows you to browse all the “Best Of” winners by proximity and by category, as well as check in to places within the app and post your check-ins to both Facebook and Twitter (With an eventual plan for Foursquare integration in phase two). It also has features that let you plan what you want to do, send winner recommendations to friends through SMS or email, and vote for the winners for Reader’s Choice awards as well as share your votes on Facebook and Twitter. In addition you can view a feed of all app activity in your city and get badges for checking into While Yelp and others are dominant in the recommendations space, what “Best Of …” has going for it is it’s expert (not crowd-sourced) curation. Village Voice Head of Digital Bill Jensen explains its appeal as such, “If I am in a specific neighborhood, I want an app that will damn well tell me I am near the Best Grilled Cheese or Best Dim Sum or Best Indie Bookstore. “ The VVM digital strategy is pretty fascinating (Disclosure: Aside from being a former employee, I’m also a big VVM fan.): “We’re taking our core products pushing them into the digital space and doing it correctly” says Jensen. “‘Best Of’ is the biggest issue of the year. People put the plaques up at their restaurants, so this was the natural thing to do.” Is localized recommendation an ambitious goal for a a purveyor of Alt weeklies? “We’re not trying to be the next Foursquare. It’s for people who want to check into places and collect stuff, that’s it, ” says Jensen.         
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Last year Facebook 
There is no doubt that mobile commerce is 
Cloud and managed hosting startup 
A newly released Android app, 
A reader, Mike, sent in a tale of woe so odd and draconian that I’m not even sure what to think of it. On one hand, Apple is protecting its interests when it comes to fake gift cards and other potentially costly hacks and, on the other hand, their reaction is far out of proportion to the actual situation.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t coming. A deal with Microsoft Bing could bring in billions, if that 
Angel investors gorged on one of their twice-a-year feeding frenzies at 
A couple days ago, in 
The question of broadband metering is becoming more important by the day. And while there’s much to be discussed about the cost of bandwidth, the trends of consumption, the public money involved in the infrastructure, and so on, one basic fact today is this: AT&T wants to put caps on your bandwidth, but they can’t be trusted to measure it correctly. That’s not a situation consumers should take without protest.
So we’re all pretty desensitized by now to the mind-blowing stupidity on display by the record industry in its foolhardy attempts at assigning damages in piracy cases — was anyone surprised when they told one woman, who had shared 24 songs, that she owed nearly two million dollars? Yes, ridiculous. But this — this is beyond ridiculous. This is… sublime.
In the era of crowd-sourced recommendation services it’s hard to remember that people actually recommend stuff for a living. My 
winners like “Best Steak” in multiple cities. A “My Stuff” page lets you see the places you’ve checked into, the badges you’ve earned as well as city milestones, checkins, voting, etc.| 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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