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Connected Adds A Comprehensive Personal Relationship Manager To Gmail | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 2 | 1 | When Salesforce last year, it subsequently which angered many of its loyal users. Today, is launching to fill the gap that Etacts left. Connected is similar in a lot of ways to except that it hyper-focuses on your relationships within Gmail. Via a web app, Connected integrates with Gmail, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Contacts, Google Calendar, and Google Voice to become a personal relationship manager. Connected builds comprehensive profiles for each of your contacts with your entire conversation history as well as their latest status updates, photos, and work history from across their social profiles. So you can easily access any relevant information in one place about a contact. One of the more useful features that Connected offers is a personalized daily agenda that includes relevant information about all attendees of meetings on your schedule. The service will email you a daily agenda with conenctions’ latest correspondence with you via Gmail, Tweets, and updates on both facebook and LinkedIn. Connected will also intelligently discover opportunities for you to reconnect with your network by notifying you of birthdays, job changes, and more (via Facebook and LinkedIn integration) and send you notifications when you have not kept in touch with a contact. Like Etacts, Connected takes a more human, personal approach to contact management. Connected’s founder, was previously an entrepreneur-in-residence at Trinity Ventures, where he hatched the idea of Connected. Rekhi previously founded and to Imeem (which was then . |
Japanese Social Mobile Games Company DeNA To Hit $1.3 Billion In Revenue | Serkan Toto | 2,011 | 2 | 1 | Japan’s leading social games company, (listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange with a $5.4 billion market cap), is running from one to the . The company, whose mobile social gaming platform boasts over 22 million users in Japan, issued its operating results [PDF] for the third financial quarter today. In this time frame, DeNA’s revenue reached $359 million, up 153% from the same quarter in fiscal 2009 and up 9% from Q2. The company’s operating profit grew 182% year-on-year to $181 million (up 8% from Q2). DeNA is projecting revenue for the entire fiscal year to reach $1.3 billion (up from $590 million last year) and operating profit to grow from $260 to $675 million. It’s to make comparisons with Zynga (which doesn’t publish financial data), but even big Z shouldn’t be able to match these numbers, at least not this year. In a nut shell, Mobage-town is like Facebook and Zynga rolled into one – exclusively available through mobile phones registered in Japan. The site currently boasts 764 games offered by over 300 companies. 90% of DeNA’s revenue and profits come from Mobage-town (sales of virtual items, avatar-related sales, ads etc.). In other words, the company is expecting over $1 billion in revenue to be generated . These are mind-boggling numbers, especially when you consider that the company is sharing Japan’s mobile social gaming market with a big competitor that follows the same business model, (which is also listed and boasts a market cap of $3.7 billion itself). DeNA is currently trying hard to diversify its product and business strategy, with a focus on bringing Mobage-town to international markets this year. The latest moves include acquiring San Francisco-based mobile games maker ngmoco , expanding its game platform (through a collaboration with Yahoo Japan) and inking a deal with Samsung to have Mobage-town on every Samsung smartphone ships from spring this year. We will keep you posted. |
T-Mobile Launches Galaxy S 4G, Now With 100% More 4G | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 2 | 1 | Hey T-Mobile owners — feel that sting? That’s the cold slap of the cruelest mistress known to the gadget world: planned obsolescence. Just 7 months after the launch of the Vibrant, T-Mobile has announced that its oh-so-marginally-improved successor, the Galaxy S 4G, will launch sometime in February. Given that most of the details surrounding the Galaxy S 4G have already leaked out or , the main point of tonight’s announcement was the launch date. It’s odd, then, that T-Mobile is holdin’ out with the specifics beyond sometime “in February”. As for the whole planned obsolescence thing, don’t feel too bad; outside of the name change, a front-facing camera, and support for T-Mobile’s network, the Vibrant and the Galaxy S 4G are pretty much the same thing. (Oh, and the Galaxy S 4G comes preloaded with a copy of . Unless T-Mobile hired some dude to go in my dreams and make me it comes with a copy of . ) |
Foodily Brings Social Goodness And Menu Sharing To Recipe Search Engine | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 2 | 1 | There a plethora of recipe search sites on the web available to cooks, including AllRecipes, Epicurious, FoodTV and many others. is attempting to make recipe search more social today with an in-depth Facebook integration, menu planning, and more. Foodily aggregates recipes from big name chefs on sites like FoodTV to up and coming bloggers. Results are actually presented side-by-side, which makes comparing recipes and ingredients side by side. It also makes searching for a recipe more like browsing through your latest Food&Wine magazine. Through an integration with Facebook, recipes “liked” on Foodily will appear in your Facebook feed, and recipes your friends like will appear in your Foodily recipe search. Foodily also will allows anyone to create a Facebook event invitation that includes a menu, allowing friends to see what dishes are planned for events like dinner parties or pot lucks. Friends can comment on the menu, share their feedback and add additional dishes they want to bring. While the recipe search engine space is crowded, what could help Foodily stand out is its social features, especially the menu integration with Facebook. Founded by former Yahoo employees, Andrea Cutright and Hillary Mickell, Foodily from Index Ventures. |
Bluefin Labs Reveals How It Is Tying Social Media To TV | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 2 | 1 | On the Web, we have links, which makes all media trackable. But on TV there are no links. So how do you track the audience response to a TV show or an ad? It’s all guesswork, panels, and surveys pretty much. But Deb Roy thinks he has a better answer: treat social media as a realtime “focus group in the wild” and tie that commentary back to TV. He wants to infer links from what people are talking about. In the video above, he explains his approach with Bluefin Labs. “Think about a switchboard that links realtime TV with social media,” he says. Roy is the founder and CEO of , a video and language analytics startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Bluefin is creating a console for advertisers and TV programmers to measure the social resonance of their content. Using sophisticated semantic analysis, Bluefin can determine what peopel are saying about a particular TV show or commercial across various social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and blogs. The console (see screenshot below) still spits out fairly raw data right now and is in the process of getting a cleaner UI, but essentially it shows what looks like a digital program guide with shows and ads being tracked on different channels. For each show or ad, the grey bars represent how much commentary was sparked across various social media, with an actual sampling of Tweets and Facebook comments, along with a tag cloud summarizing what people are saying about that show or ad. A brand introducing a new product could see how often the name of the product is mentioned by people talking about it versus the overall umbrella brand. Advertisers interested in actually measuring engagement could use this data to see how much buzz is created given the reach of a particular show. They could look at the response rate per airing and then rank order each TV network to see where their ad dollars are best spent. “For every mass media action there is some sort of audience response,” says Roy. “This has always been the case. Because of the low barrier to entry to social media there are feedback loops. Those roll up to a significant new force which shifts how audiences view the mass media.” Roy is a at the MIT Media Lab and he founded the company in 2008 with one of his Ph.D students, Michael Fleischmann. ver the past 15 years, Roy’s research explored the nexus between video and language. He taught a robot named Toko the names of objects using video and language as complimentary feedback loops, and put his own family under video surveillance to capture how his son learned language over a period of 36 months. Now with Bluefin, he is taking that deep machine learning and semantic analysis and applying it to TV. Last year, Bluefin raised a $6 million series A financing led by Redpoint Ventures. Other investors in that and a previous seed round include Lerer Ventures, Acadia Woods Ventures, Brian Bedol and Jonathan Kraft. The company has raised a total of $8.35 million, including a $1.15 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The company is piloting its console with nine large advertisers, brands, and media agencies including Pepsi. But getting back to how social media can create effective links to TV. What is a link? It is a reference to something else on the Web. When you talk about a TV show or ad that is also a reference, but you usually don’t use links. Your comments, however, are increasingly being captured by social media. “You don’t need to interact with a piece of online media to create a response,” says Roy, “all you need is somebody to talk to.” Bluefin is “treating social media like clickstreams: It determines when somebody is talking about a particular show or ad on TV using its language learning and semantic analysis engine, and then creates an implicit link to that content in its database. It is taking social media and mass media and mixing them together. |
Valentine’s Giveaway: New York Readers, Win An Electric Car Love Date From Hertz | John Biggs | 2,011 | 2 | 1 | Not to be outdone by Zipcar, Hertz recently launched , a car sharing service. In order to stay hip, they’ve started renting out electric cars like the wee Smart fourtwo and they want to send you and your SO on a wild ride through the streets of New York. First, and this is the bad part, you have to be an NYC resident and you have to have a driver’s license. Here’s what you can win: · Year-long membership to Connect by Hertz ($50 value)
· $100 drive-time credit
· $100 gift card to either here in NY
You don’t have to use any of this on Valentine’s Day proper, but wouldn’t it be nice if you did? To enter, just comment below describing how romantic you’ll be on your big date. We’ll pick one winner on on February 4 and get you set up so you, too, can be the luckiest guy on the Lower East Side. Thanks to for the prizes. UPDATE – The Winner is Diego. Congrats! |
New PS3 Firmware Won't Be Secure For Long | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 1 |
Although the for the (with reports of ) is just hitting today, it looks like it’s only going to be a matter of days before an easy crack is made available for it, if early indications pan out. Not that we support piracy here at CrunchGear, but the constant battle between hacker and hacked is always interesting. Sony just tries so hard! Too hard, I think. It seems that some extant tools for unpacking the PS3 firmware , and in a jiffy some savvy code monkeys will have extracted the means (the signing keys) to run unauthorized code and included it in a cooked firmware pack. We’ll keep you updated. Really, though, you should just print out figure A, here, and look at it whenever you hear about someone updating or cracking DRM or console security. I might have to adjust the timing on those arrows soon, though. |
Our Great Sin | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 1 |
I recently watched, like many of our readers, the interview ( , ) with Mike Daisey regarding the conditions under which Apple products are made in China. And at the risk of fomenting conflict with Mr. Daisey, I would like to editorialize on the topic in slightly harsher terms. Actually, it’s not that I disagree with the man, exactly. It’s that he doesn’t go far enough, and in doing so conveniently avoids requiring himself or anyone else from doing anything but If you’re going to take on ideas like globalism, corporate responsibility, and cross-cultural morality, you don’t get off that easy. You can’t establish a predicate like “the way our lifestyle is made possible is immoral” and somehow avoid unpleasant conclusions. The “great sin” isn’t Apple’s, or any one of the other major international corporations that use Foxconn or similar megafactories. And it isn’t Foxconn’s either. It’s clearly, inescapably, ours. |
null | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 8 | null |
Wear Around Your Childhood Friends With These Spaceman Lego Cufflinks | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 2 | 1 |
These Lego Spaceman cufflinks are sort of self-explanatory just like the folks who wear them. Fine by me. $16.99 a pair on at this Etsy store where there are about a zillion and quarter more similar Lego cufflinks and tie tacks. . [via ] |
Alleged iPad 2 Display Found: Lighter And Thinner, But Is It High-Rez? | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 1 |
9to5mac has gotten their hands on what they believe is an display, and it’s… not actually that exciting, but still a great scoop for them. Unfortunately, while the screen is definitely lighter and thinner than the previous one, they have no way of telling whether it is, in fact, the we’ve heard . |
Wow, Microsoft And Google Are Punching Each Other In The Face Right In Front Of Us! | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 2 | 1 | By now, you’ve undoubtedly heard the news. Google set up a sting operation (how cool is that?) in an attempt to catch Microsoft red-handed stealing their search results. And according to them, they did just that — and made it known. Microsoft has seemingly both sidestepped and denied the claim — and then has sent accusations back Google’s way. The whole thing is amazing, and to be honest, I’m still trying to parse it all. But you can get the whole gist by reading , starting with on the topic. But what’s most interesting right now is that Google and Microsoft are engaged in a full-on war. Yes, they’ve more or less been at war for many years. But it’s mainly been a quiet war, that takes place behind the scenes and only occasionally includes quick jabs at the other one in public. But now they’re straight-up calling each other liars on Twitter, and their own very popular blogs! After the news and subsequent fight first broke out this morning. Microsoft immediately put up a rebuttal on their Bing blog, entitled: . That article directly addresses Sullivan’s post but doesn’t directly call out Google for much. Then things . This prompted Microsoft communication head, Frank Shaw, to take to Twitter in an attempt to swing Microsoft into the offensive postion. Here were his three key tweets: http://twitter.com/#!/fxshaw/status/32519996852674560 http://twitter.com/#!/fxshaw/status/32520638384046080 http://twitter.com/#!/fxshaw/status/32521854614773760 Google’s Matt Cutts fired back on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/mattcutts/status/32563278450270208 Google then decided to escalate things further by using their official blog to very directly call Microsoft out with a post titled: . I mean, just think about that for a second. Then, about an hour ago, there was this great exchange on Twitter in response to Dave Winer posting a link to the original story: http://twitter.com/#!/davewiner/status/32576923011907584 http://twitter.com/#!/fxshaw/status/32576970113941504 http://twitter.com/#!/davewiner/status/32577188616212480 http://twitter.com/#!/fxshaw/status/32577796211482625 Bang! http://twitter.com/#!/mattcutts/status/32586790707658752 Zing! http://twitter.com/#!/fxshaw/status/32589440849281024 Pow! http://twitter.com/#!/akovacs/status/32585270050164736 Ouch! Grab the popcorn and pull up a ring-side seat! |
Sports Streaming Sites, Including Roja Directa & Atdhe, Being Taken Down En Masse | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 2 | 1 | It would appear that several popular streaming sites are being taken down as we speak. One that I’m familiar with, Roja Directa, has a note on its front page saying that its main domain, rojadirecta.org, . (Dot-org now displays a scary-looking notice from the U.S. Homeland Security Department, while other domains, including dot-com are up and running just fine.) This, despite the fact that the site was deemed by Spanish courts (the site is based in Spain) to be 100 percent legal. Hm. Another popular site, Atdhe, also appears to have been taken down, with only a simple message appearing on the site right now telling visitors to bookmark a specific I.P. address. The site’s says that the site will re-launch sometime tomorrow. None of this should surprise you. has been on a tear of late, taking down illegal streams of its events all the time, even going so far as . UFC is a peculiar company in that most of its revenue comes from pay-per-view dollars. If it gets to the point that not enough people are buying its pay-pew-view events it would more or less require a complete restructuring of the way the company does business. Can the same be said for England’s Premier League, or Spain’s La Liga? Each and every weekend you can find streams of games from all of Europe’s major (and minor) leagues. A site like Roja Directa isn’t hosting anything, but merely serving as a link repository. I guess links are illegal now. More on this as it develops; I doubt we’ve heard the last of this story. |
Need To Find The Ladies ASAP? Wheretheladies.at Finally Hits The App Store | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 1 | Geo-location has come to this: After three weeks in review, , a web app that aggregates Foursquare checkins by the female gender, is now available on the iPhone. The concept OF A BIG COMPASS POINTING YOU IN THE DIRECTION OF LADIES is so unprecedented that Apple actually called co-founder on his cellphone to ask about the app during the review process. Co-founded by Path’s and Hodsdon, Wheretheladies.at the iPhone app ranks nearby locations by the number of females who have checked in (using a dictionary crawl and permutation logic when gender isn’t available) as well as helpfully points you in the direction of the critical mass of ladies in your vicinity. We called service as it is essentially nerds using technology to circumvent Darwinism. The fittest now includes those who have smarts, or at least smartphones. Hodsdon says that the difference between Wheretheladies.at and apps like is temporal. Wheretheladies.at only counts check-ins within the past 30 minutes to ensure that ladies will be there when you arrive, Right now the app only works in San Francisco, but the team is working on getting it to other cities. When I asked if they would ever build , Hodsdon quickly replied, Hodsdon emails me seconds after this post went up, You can find out where they’ll be by downloading the app |
AT&T's Last-Minute iPhone Blitz: "Feel free to make a call while reading this email." | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 2 | 1 | Well, you have to give AT&T some credit. They are trying hard to make sure they don’t succumb to a massive hemorrhage of users when the Verizon iPhone hits in a couple of days. Today, they’ve been sending out emails to current customers with the following subject line: Feel free to make a call while reading this email. Very clever. This, of course, plays up the fact that while the AT&T iPhone can support both data and voice at the same time, the Verizon iPhone can’t (due to current CDMA limitations). The body of the email has a woman using her phone with a Bluetooth headset. She’s clearly talking to someone while surfing the web at the same time as there’s a speech bubble saying “I’m online buying movie tickets now. Is the 3 o’clock showing okay?” Below that, there’s this statement: “Only AT&T’s network lets you talk and surf the web at the same time on your iPhone.” And below that, just one more jab: “On the nation’s fastest mobile broadband network.” But best of all, AT&T also includes a coupon in the email for current customers to get 25 percent off any mobile accessory at an AT&T store. If you can’t earn their love. Buy their love. The Verizon iPhone launches on Thursday exclusively for current Verizon customers. It will launch next Thursday for everyone else — meaning, potentially millions of AT&T customers. You can probably expect more of these types of ads and campaigns until then. |
Game Developers Conference Panel Suggests PC PlayStation Move Development | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 2 | 1 | A panel at this year’s Game Developers Conference has the Internet (or, at the very least, the CG chatroom) with excitement. The (ctrl-f for “move”), “Update on PlayStation Move Development,” says the official description, “will bring developers up to speed on developing for controller. We will cover developing for the new PlayStation Move Sharp Shooter accessory. We will discuss the new Move Server project that will make it possible for academics and hobbyists to develop software using the PlayStation Move controller on their own PCs.” PC? Wait, what? There’s a few ways you can interpret the description, the most exciting of which is that Sony plans to open up Move development for the PC in some capacity. Imagine a Move version of ! Oh my goodness, I’m certain the universe itself would stop expanding upon learning of that development. Why keep expanding when there’s Angry Birds: Move Edition afoot? It could also be something far more prosaic, like an academic-only SDK. Greg tells me that standard-issue PS3 controller can work on Mac just fine, after a quick driver install. It’s not an official solution, but it gets the job done. Let’s also not forgot that as soon as the was released hackers on making it run on your friendly neighborhood computer. |
We Have A New Uber Boss, And She's Greek: Aol Buys HuffPo For $315 Million | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 6 | You know who won the Super Bowl? Arianna Huffington. This afternoon our parent company Aol Huffington Post for $315 million according to a press . Gah. , with its 26 million monthly unique visitors is huge, one of the most prominent media properties on the Internet because of its stance. And the company has gone through the acquisition motions before, most notably . Apparently this time it . In , Armstrong and Huffington recall the acquisition process: The two met in November and Huffington was impressed with the of their vision. And no doubt the sizable amount of the Aol offer, which at $315 million Huffington Post’s expected revenue for next year. The talks took three months. Huffington said. Back in June we pegged a possible Aol and Yahoo deal at around $360 million, Aol paid $45 million less than that at $315 million this time. To all of you making HuffingtonCrunch and Crunchington Post jokes, Huffington’s official title will be Editor In Chief in charge of all Aol properties, including Engadget, Urlesque and yes us. Welcome to the family, Arianna. You can read more about how we feel about this acquisition and . This news was first by Kara Swisher at AllThingsD. |
Tech Returns To The Super Bowl Big Time, An Ad Roundup | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 6 | For those of us who know nothing about football, the Super Bowl is more about what the huge brands who buy ads chose to do with their millions of dollars worth of prime eyeball time, paying to play with a captive audience in the hundreds of millions. And the technology industry always steps up to the plate; Apple its famous 1984 ad during the Super Bowl and so did Web 1.0 symbol Pets.com. Last year Google its “Parisian Love” ad. We had quite a few tech firsts this year, including the first ever Twitter hashtag within an ad. The pant-sniffing guy the minds and heards of Twitter, but nonetheless it seems like the tech sector had a strong showing. Between the daily deals site and GoDaddy’s superbowl ad suicide and all the non-tech commercials that seemed to incorporate tech elements like a hashtag in the case of Audi and The Chevy Cruise ad that inadvertently encouraged Facebook stalking, the message is clear: The Internet is here to stay. And while the tech sector made multiple appearances tonight, the biggest play was made by Rupert Murdoch’s ‘The Daily.’ Murdoch’s ad buy offered nothing distinctive branding-wise but cost $3 million dollars, which means that he could have offered a year subscription at $40 to 75K people instead of buying the ad. Something tells me that might have been a better strategy. In the meantime, here’s a roundup of this year’s tech related ads in order of appearance (I’m including online-only properties like Cars.com), with some honorary mentions at the end. You can find my snarky commentary about each , as always. By the way, I have no idea which team actually won. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IOvxz8zHr9s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gHx9U5OimE&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6JCkqk5o3A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J83EQ7LubwE&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=c8VBQioFH44 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8B-Vu94Sd4M# http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DH_IqDD58Qg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyPqW6WsMPs&feature=youtu.be http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xF47Kkk16VQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=V8pdDI2O_Y4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yTe3Zp7Z_Z8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=k24N5DQ_XaY http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ycwmYbK0gIQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=O-qEqXzQ1SA http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ap5XwwEGR7k# http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RoN-Vr04niE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2H-3Gf_fL8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpgWPcXyBws&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eUHDFafqykI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIzPTC_9Ftc http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=X9xGw-SWej8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3snyXTNmFm8# |
Armstrong's Internal Memo To AOLers About The HuffPo Deal | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 2 | 6 | At midnight, AOL announced that it will buy the Huffington Post for . Below is the internal memo AOL CEO Tim Armstrong sent to all AOL employees (except us, they don’t trust us with anything) about the transaction. In between the corporate speak, he points out that a combined AOL and Huffington Post will have 117 million unduplicated unique visitors per month in the U.S., and outlines the new organizational structure with Arianna Huffington as Editor In Chief of all of AOL’s media properties, including TechCrunch. AOL exec Jon Brod will be overseeing the integration from an operational perspective on the AOL side. ——————–
AOLers, We are taking another major step in the comeback of AOL. Today we are announcing that we have agreed to acquire The Huffington Post, one of the most exciting, influential, and fastest growing properties on the Internet. We believe in brands, quality journalism, and the positive role of communities in the world—The Huffington Post shares our values and the combination of the two companies will create the premier global and local media company on the Internet. Co-founded six years ago by Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer, The Huffington Post has grown to become an industry leader—one of the Web’s most popular and innovative sources of online news, commentary, and information. Arianna and team have created a brand and a destination that focuses on the consumer experience. By combining The Huffington Post with AOL’s network of sites, thriving video offerings, local expertise and enormous reach, we will create a company that is laser-focused on serving our audiences across every platform imaginable – social, local, video, mobile and tablet. The Huffington Post is core to our strategy and our 80:80:80 focus – 80% of domestic spending is done by women, 80% of commerce happens locally and 80% of considered purchases are driven by influencers. The influencer part of the strategy is important and will be potent. The Huffington Post is a strong influencer brand and it attracts a valuable audience, including a great focus on women’s content. In addition, Arianna Huffington is a world-renowned expert on women’s topics and issues, and has enabled The Huffington Post to grow rapidly by continually developing new audiences. In the local area, the combination of the two companies will create a scaled connection between global and local communities on one platform. This will create a new way for people to get local and global information in a timely and entertaining way. The Huffington Post will join the family of AOL Brands that are destinations for an influencer audience, brands like TechCrunch, Engadget, AutoBlog, and Moviefone. Uniquely, The Huffington Post is the platform for influential people — the people that drive trends, commerce, politics, entertainment, news, and information. Adding this strategic platform to our already strong network of sites, including the AOL homepage, has the potential to make AOL the most influential company in the content space. Arianna Huffington is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the Internet space and someone that is even more successful in building communities and relationships in every corner of the globe. The Huffington Post and Arianna have created a company that has partnered with the most successful and well-known leaders in all aspects of society that touch important topics to give consumers direct access to the most influential decision makers and community leaders. This acquisition will create a high-quality and diverse digital ecosystem encompassing local, national and international news, politics, entertainment, technology, fashion, sports, health, personal finance, green, lifestyle, the arts and more. This deal will combine the amazing talent at AOL with the innovative and talented staff of The Huffington Post. Here are just a few high-level points around what this deal brings to market: In the local area, the combination of the two companies will create a premier global/local syndication network at scale. This will create a new way for people to get local and global information in a timely, informative and entertaining way. To maximize the strategic advantage of this great deal, we will be creating a new group at AOL called The Huffington Post Media Group. Within this group will be AOL Media, AOL Local & Mapping, AOL Search and our new friends at The Huffington Post. We will continue operating the towns structure, AOL.com and HuffingtonPost.com. I’m thrilled to announce that Arianna Huffington will join AOL’s executive team as President and Editor in Chief of The Huffington Post Media Group. We have asked Jon Brod to lead the overall operational integration on the AOL side of the combined entities. Jon will lead the local group integration and work closely with David Eun and the teams in AOL Media. We will work quickly with The Huffington Post to create a combined organizational design to coincide with the deal closing. While we wait for the required regulatory reviews to be completed and the transaction to close before implementing the design, we will move very quickly to plan the details of the integration of the two companies. To this end, we will announce the new organizational structure as soon as possible. In the meantime, we will continue creating great content and products for our consumers within the town structure and stay laser-focused on the aggressive goals we have set for our winter luge. We are on the right track and will continue our weekly operating cadence and town structure to drive successful results against our company goals. Here’s a special message for all of you we taped to welcome The Huffington Post and Arianna to our AOL Family: http://today.office.aol.com/company-news/2011/02/aol-agrees-buy-huffington-post And of course we wanted to welcome Arianna to our “You’ve Got” video of the day—check her out on AOL.com. We will be holding a company all hands meeting to address your questions related to today’s exciting news. We will video conference from our New York office on the 6th Floor at 9:30 AM ET and will be joined by Arianna Huffington and key executives from her organization. We will also be holding a call for our west coast offices at 2:00 PM ET and for our Patch offices at 2:45 PM ET. See below for meeting info (conference rooms will be sent out shortly). AOL is playing to win…and The Huffington Post and AOL will occupy a unique place in the future of the Internet. Let’s go get it done. –TA |
OMG/JK: Apple Straight-Arms The Competition As Honeycomb Prepares For Kick-Off | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 2 | 6 | Anyway, it’s been a big week in mobile: MG is now able to make phone calls using his Verizon iPhone (which will be released to consumers this week). We also got our first chance to try out Android Honeycomb, as well as Google’s web-based Android Market. And, finally, we discuss Apple’s decision to block Sony’s E-Reader application, and what the implications are for Amazon’s Kindle platform.
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Egyptian PM Says Missing Google Marketing Executive Wael Ghonim To Be Released Tomorrow | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 6 | CNN’s Hala Gorani is that Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq has announced on Egyptian State TV that Google Middle East Marketing Director Wael Ghonim will be released tomorrow Monday at 4pm. This is in line with Egyptian telcom mogul Naguib Sawiris’ O TV that Ghonim would be freed on Monday as well. Missing since Thursday the 27th, Ghonim is to have hosted the first Facebook page that organized the January 25th protests. He disappeared shortly after the following disconcerting , After his disappearance, Ghonim was as symbolic spokesperson by an Egyptian opposition group as a tactic to speed up his release. A of a man who may or may not have been Ghonim getting arrested by the police has also been making the rounds. A source on the ground in Egypt tells me that the government has switched tactics as of late, instead of a complete information blackout it is using government controlled TV and press to influence popular opinion. Perhaps this is why Gorani hashtagged her above tweet with ? Up until now, Google has confirmed that he is missing with the following statement: I’m still waiting to hear back from Google if there are any updates to this status after today’s news. http://twitter.com/#!/Ghonim/status/30748650980249600 Image: |
The Super Bowl Apps/Websites So That You Can Pretend You're Into The Game While Looking At Your Phone | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 2 | 6 | It’s Super Bowl Sunday. The game starts in a few hours. The pre-game has been going on for a few hours already (well, several days, actually). And if you’re reading this post, the chances that you’re a diehard football fan are probably fairly slim — because, let’s be honest, if you were, you’d already be drunk in a bar somewhere. But everyone watches the Super Bowl; diehards and casual fans alike. And the latter might enjoy it more with some apps/websites to help them pass the time. So here are some of those (in no particular order): That should be enough to get your started. I’m sure there are dozens (if not hundreds) more. Enjoy the game. |
Hey, Salesforce, Using Will.i.am In An Ad Doesn't Automatically Make You Cool | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 2 | 6 | Well, Salesforce just debuted its Super Bowl Chatter ads (we’ve embedded the ads below), which were a little disappointing. The ads Will.i.am and the rest of the Black Eyes Peas in a cartoon promoting the CRM giant’s ‘Facebook for the enterprise.’ The ads, which aired during the halftime show, include what appears to be computer-generated cartoon versions of Will.i.am (he actually co-produced the ad) and his bandmates, zooming around, and talking about how Chatter helps them communicate more efficiently. To be honest, I find the commercials a little confusing and too quick. And it’s hard to imagine that a technology company would spend millions for two ads that seemed to be average at best. And Will.i.am is sort of a stretch as an enterprise customer. But as Salesforce , the company has ambitions of making the communications platform more of a mainstream tool. How much do you want to bet that The Black Eyes Peas have never used Chatter? $3 million? What do you think? Will these ads help Chatter become the ‘Facebook for the Enterprise’? [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdqoQ0zL7GQ&w=640&h=390] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcjAD-_H_rk&w=640&h=390] |
How Does UFC's New & Improved Internet Pay-Per-View Stream Compare To The 'Real' Thing? | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 2 | 6 | NeuLion to bring “a brand new service for offering the most interactive, far-reaching digital experience yet.” Last night’s UFC 126 was the first pay-per-view event to receive the NeuLion treatment, so I decided to see what all the fuss was about. Fair warning: There will be spoliers. First, who’s NeuLion? The company as “a leading IPTV company providing a comprehensive suite of technology and services to content owners and aggregators.” Its partners include MLS, the NHL, the NBA, Bellator Fighting Championships, and now UFC, which is by far the biggest mixed martial arts promotion in the world. Non-sport clients include Dish Network and several international organizations I’m not too familiar with, including Latin America’s JumpTV and Scandinavia’s ScandiTV. UFC 126, broadcast live from Las Vegas, featured Anderson Silva front-kicking Vitor Belfort into next Tuesday, fast-rising sensation Jon “Bones” Jones guillotining Ryan Bader, who’s an altogether excellent wrestler, and the UFC debut of Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto, Japan’s most famous mixed martial artist—excepting Kazushi Sakuraba, of course. Too bad he lost. What do you get for your ? (Fun fact: The event on ufc.tv in Germany and Austria. Gotta build that audience somehow: UFC was thrown off the air in Germany .) Naturally there’s a high-quality Flash livestream—there was a noticeable bump in quality once Jones vs. Bader began—but that’s always been available on previous official UFC streams; it’s nothing to brag about. That the steam jumped around in bitrate was annoying but to be expected. (I should think my Internet connection, with 101 mbps down, can handle a mere Flash stream!) The NeuLion-ness begins with the ability to choose from multiple camera angles: the standard broadcast camera, cameras from each fighter’s corner, and an overhead camera. These disparate camera angles can be viewed simultaneously in a “quad view” mode. Similarly, there’s a picture-in-picture mode that allows you to hover a secondary camera angle window on top of your primary camera angle window, which remains at full-size. English and Spanish-language audio feeds are available, as well as each fighter’s corner’s audio feed. If you, like me, studied Portuguese in college for seemingly no reason then you could have listened to Anderson Silva’s corner bark orders at him for the duration of the fight. Well, the duration of the round. Good, clean fun, but I think I’m correct in noting that last year, too. On the right-hand side lies an “enhanced view,” which contains a live chatroom where you can talk to other folks about the on-screen action. Fans can also score rounds in this panel. Will you, unlike pretty much every judge out there, be brave enough to give a round a 10-8 score, or perhaps the even rarer 10-10? A built-in panel follows the #UFC and #UFC126 hashtags. Now the question on everyone’s mind: is this better than a traditional pay-per-view that you’d buy from your cable or satellite TV provider? I’m going to say no, it’s not, but it’s getting there. First off, I can’t imagine too many people will want to huddle around a laptop to watch a sports event, though I suppose you could connect your computer to your TV and watch it that way. I’d imagine the number of people who know how to day that, much less are willing to do that, is effectively zero. UFC tends to be a communal viewing experience: you invite your friends over, order a couple of pizzas, the whole nine yards. You stand to lose that here. For $10 more I could have ordered the HD version of the event from DirecTV and watched it on my 50-inch TV. That said, I did enjoy the experience. The livestream was of a high enough quality that I didn’t feel like I was watching a YouTube video in 2006 (or an illegal stream), and the same can be said of the audio quality: top-notch. It’s not Dolby Digital, but what are you gonna do? The multiple camera angles certainly added the the whole experience—I believe “immersion” would be the word to use—but I often found myself sticking with the standard broadcast camera. The chat room was largely No Buys (read: lame), but that’s to be expected: people in live sports chatrooms tend to be rather prickly. “So-and-so sucks” and so forth. Stop trying to get yourselves , sirs. It should also be said that if were to ever make its way to the U.S. this service would wither and die. (And you need more evidence why cable companies would love to charge by the gigabyte? It makes things like Internet pay-per-view streams prohibitively expensive, pushing people back to plain ol’ pay-per-view where they get a nice cut of the action, sharing that revenue with the likes of UFC and .) My biggest concern is price: $45 is simply too much money to ask for a livestream of sometimes dubious quality, particularly when a proper HD pay-per-view from the cable company (in my case, DirecTV) is a mere $10 more. As much as people like to hate on and and the like, the fact is your HD pay-per-view isn’t going to “buffer” at inopportune times. Until all of the kinks have been worked out, UFC would do well to experiment with their stream prices. The card last night was one of the deepest in history, so $45 doesn’t sting as much as it would have stung for, say, last September’s . Why not price some of the “B” events at closer to $30 and make them impulse buys? Then again, UFC fans tend to be among in all of sports, so maybe Dana White & Co. are right to charge whatever they want. Another annoyance is the fact that you’re only given a 24-hour window to watch the event. That’s in direct contrast to and Internet pay-per-vew ( ) events found on . There, you buy the event (typically $15) and can watch it on-demand forever, usually beginning the very next day. If nothing else, UFC should be commend for trying to bring its product into the Internet era. While it’s true that the company is in an effort to eliminate illegal Internet streams—a difficult task —at least it’s offering viable alternatives to would-be customers. (Kid Yamamoto’s fight aired on the company’s for free, as seen in the above grab.) The used to sue everyone, too, but it never really offered a legal alternative to sate the obvious demand for digital downloads. No, had to drag the music industry kicking and screaming for that . |
Skype's GM Of Consumer Products On Mobile Video; The Cloud And Monetization | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 2 | 6 | For Skype, 2011 is undoubtedly going to be a pivotal year. The VoIP giant is and , Skype is looking to add new products for both its consumer and enterprise businesses and . Already, Skype to its iPhone app, acquired and to its enterprise offerings. While we’ve heard about the company’s enterprise strategy, we have not yet uncovered the details of Skype’s long-term consumer strategy. Skype GM of Consumer spoke to TechCrunch about the VoIP company’s goals when it comes to expanding its consumer user base, product roadmap and revenue plans. When asked what the most important product strategy is for Skype in 2011, Stevens was quick to reply that video, especially on mobile devices, is going to be a significant area of development for the company. At any given time Skype now has 28 million simultaneous users (which is up from 27 million reported in early January), with 42 percent of these users engaging in video calls. While Skype has video functionality on its Windows, Mac and now iPhone clients, there is still much more to come in 2011 says Stevens. “We want to put Skype video everywhere, whether it be on a TV, tablet, or smartphone, Stevens tells TechCrunch. Mobile video has huge potential, he says, especially considering the traction Skype’s recently launched iPhone app has seen with the new functionality. In its first week in the App Store, the new version of Skype’s iPhone app saw ten million new downloads, and a million video calls were made on the app’s first day in the store. Of course, Skype plans to expand its mobile video presence to other mobile operating systems. Stevens believes that tablets could be an ideal platform for Skype, especially if video is added to the next-generation iPad. And he says that an Android app with video integration will be launched in the next few months. Another product area where Skype is readying a major strategic push is the cloud. We heard that Skype was sniffing around a few web chat startups and spotted these on the company’s website last Fall. We confirmed that Skype was building a team to work on cloud products and a number of web-based applications this year including a plug-in and integrations with well-known partners. Stevens reiterates that Skype will be making a big move to the cloud; saying the time is right for realtime communications via Skype to hit the web. Skype’s cloud products will vary, from a plug-in to the ability for developers and advertisers to embed click-to call ads using Skype’s technology. Specifically, click-to-call advertising on the web is a way for Skype to bring in revenue. Another potential revenue model, says Steven, is to work with carriers to include Skype’s mobile services as part of a consumer’s phone bill. So the data used via Skype’s services could be charged to the consumers directly through the carriers. One of the benefits of Skype, says Stevens, is that its a scalable model that can be extended to the cloud. But the challenge is making the “right bets on the right opportunities.” He declined to name Skype’s partners in the cloud-based initiatives but did say that the company has a “vast number of potential partners,” with the challenge being how to prioritize partners. Partners could range from shopping sites to online dating sites. For all of its engineering ambitions in terms of the web and mobile, you may be surprised to know that Skype only has 350 engineers. Stevens says that hiring talent is definitely a challenge in Silicon Valley but that acquisitions like Qik help the company boost the number developers and engineers. And the company is looking for more acquisitions in the future; which will be focused on talent and technology vs. marketshare, he adds. In terms of hiring, the company said this past week it will be adding 350 jobs mainly in its newly opened Palo Alto office in the realm of engineering. For Skype, product development may not be the company’s biggest challenge. Before taking the company public, Skype needs to convince investors that it can While enterprise efforts are easier to monetize, Skype will have find a way to make its consumer users to pay for additional features for a service that has been free for sometime. As of August 2010, of Skype’s customers pay for the service. Stevens maintains that Skype will need to increase awareness of its paid services, but new and old, in the coming year. But, he adds, Skype has a basic services will always include a free model for video and calling. One thing in Skype’s favor is that it is a brand that people love and use on a daily basis, Stevens explains. The company has a massive userbase, with nearly 600 million total registered users (for a basis of comparison, Facebook that number as well), so attracting members is clearly not an issue for Skype. But in the process of trying to monetize these users, Skype will have to strike a fine balance. The company certainly doesn’t want to start alienating users by charging for services that were once free. At the same time, the company has to deliver innovative products that consumers are actually willing to shell out cash for on a routine basis. It’s a problem that many prolific technology companies have had to face; and the company is tackling the issue while under the scrutiny of potential investors during the IPO process. “This is going to be a defining year for Skype,” says Stevens. I think we can all agree with that statement. |
Save The Money: Groupon's Super Bowl Ads May Spark Faux Outrage | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 2 | 6 | Well, Groupon certainly isn’t afraid of rustling a few feathers. The red-hot group buying site has just posted its celeb-laden Super Bowl ads, and they’ve taken to poking fun at global crises like dwindling whale populations and deforestation. They’re a little weird, and likely to spark waves of debate and plenty of extra publicity. Groupon rival LivingSocial will be running a Super Bowl ad as well, that reportedly tells the story of a LivingSocial addict — Groupon poked fun at this with its own ” ad. Guess whose commercials people will be talking about at the water cooler tomorrow? And while some people won’t like the joke, Groupon isn’t being mean-spirited about it: its site has offers for a variety of charity organizations. For example, making a $15 donation to GreenPeace will score you $15 in Groupon Credit (it’s essentially a free donation on your part). [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOvxz8zHr9s&w=640&h=390] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJxIfvfv1fM&w=640&h=390] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6rZz1wOtTw&w=640&h=390] |
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The Royal Me | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 2 | 6 | The King’s Speech is worthy of the Best Actor award Colin Firth will likely garner at this year’s Academy Awards as a proxy for Best Picture going elsewhere. The Oscar voters are younger these days and will overlook the story of Queen Elizabeth’s stuttering father and how the reluctant prince reached the throne. They’ll vote for King Mark of Facebook instead. But this isn’t about the Oscars; it’s about the remarkable scene late in the film when King George makes his way down rows of huge metal machines to a small shrouded room where he is to deliver a speech to the British Empire on its entry into war with Hitler and Germany. For those on Facebook, Twitter, or Quora, Hitler was a really bad man who looked a lot like Robert Downey in his Charlie Chaplin biopic. Charlie Chaplin was a …. Oh never mind. Anyway, the King marched past these machines marked Canada, Australia, and the other colonies. For the Facebook, Twitter, Quora crowd, we here in the United States used to be subjects of the King or Queen and therefore required to bow and curtsy as he or she passed by. Another synonym for curtsy is to scrape, as in grovel but not as in scrape Google search results. Anyway, these machines were all connected by huge cables to the main control console where the King’s microphone was turned into radio waves. In turn, each machine sent the signal to each country. sort of like Seesmic or Tweetdeck, where each stream has its own column. The speech came at a point in England’s history where the monarchy was fading in relevance but not in its importance. As the King said in the film, he had none of the power to form a government or start a war but was expected to lead his subjects through the darkest of times. For Facebook, Twitter, and Quora subjects, it was like being Google with all the money in the world but no clue about how to get social. Being a true story, the King’s speech was obviously destined to be a triumph over adversity. This being Hollywood or something akin to it, we weren’t about to see the King fail and quit in ignominy like Nixon or go on hiatus like Charlie Sheen. As the speech wound its way through strangled stutters and hilarious obscenity-laced silences, the filmmakers cut from scene to scene of ordinary people listening around the radio in living rooms and leaning on the bar in pubs. Like a series of paintings, the emotion of the common bond of king and subject resonated in the faces of the assembled. A nation clicking the Like button. Today our royalty takes the form of Brangelina and Buzz Lightyear. Instead of giant machines paging down a long hallway, we carry our radios in our pockets and foment revolutions in an instant on Twitter. We are no longer subjects but followers, and our royalty are no longer born to the crown but IPOed. Pretenders to the throne are no longer upstarts but startups. Public flogging no longer takes place in the town square but on TechCrunch and Gawker. Have you seen my favorite commercial, the one where squirms as he attempts to wriggle out of his wife asking whether her new dress makes her backside look big? That’s the magic of The King’s Speech, an elaborate fiction designed to show us how common the royals are and how royal the rest of us are. For those of us on Facebook, Twitter, and Quora, it’s time to party like it’s 1939. |
Fly Or Die: Can The Daily Make It? | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 2 | 6 | The big product this week was Rupert Murdoch’s new iPad publication, . On this episode of , CrunchGear editor John Biggs and I weigh in on its prospects for survival. We also discuss Clicker’s iPhone app and the , and we are joined by a surprise guest from one of the companies whose products we evaluate. While not exactly the , it’s paywall is , and it does take , it is very well packaged and a truly immersive experience. When I read it, I spend a considerable amount of time in the app flipping through pages to see what else is in store. And I’m a former magazine guy who’s given up on magazines, so that’s saying a lot. Biggs also . is light but informative, the way that you’d imagine Time or Newsweek should be on the iPad (it’s really more of a daily news magazine than a newspaper). There is some serious on-the street journalism from Egypt mixed with human interest stories and fluff, but there are always a few articles worth reading. The photos and videos make it a pleasurable visual experience. With $30 million already sunk into the project and an operating budget of $500,000 a week, you’d expect no less. It’s main weakness, other than the app being a bit slow and clunky, is that it seems to ignore the Web other than for sharing stories with other people. There are no links in the articles, and no social streams of curated news or realtime updates. It lacks the immediacy of a blog or Twitter, or even of a news website. We get into all this in the video. Next we pick on , the guide for video on both TV and the Web. The app lets you look up shows, check-in to them, and see what your friends and other people are saying about them. I like the fact that it is agnostic about whether a show is on TV or on the Web, it just helps you find it, but I think it could do a better job on showing realtime Tweets about a show. The Dell Streak, well, what can I say? It’s most redeeming feature is its Gorilla Glass screen. When I tried to smash it against the table, it didn’t even get a scratch. I hope you enjoy this episode. Tell us in comments what products you’d like us to review next week. |
Wordchuck's Shelly Roche On The Challenges Of Being "RV Profitable" [TCTV] | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 24 | Offhand internationalization doesn’t seem like it should be a problem for websites, or at least it should be a problem that should be easy to solve. Well not so much, at least according to founder We brought Roche into the newly redesigned TCTV studio to talk about her efforts at automating translation (in over 20 languages!) for the Ruby on Rails community, what its like a TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon as well as her future plans for the internationalization of web content, a project which evolved out of her own attempts to make localization less painful for her own personal development efforts. Workchuck received 100K of angel funding shortly after TechCrunch Disrupt, and Shelly’s been working on wearing multiple hats ever since, building a startup by herself out of her 17-year-old 23′ Class C RV. Watch the video above to catch up with Shelly and get a taste of her “RV Profitable” adventure. You can also catch Shelly back in the day , or in the Wordchuck walk through, below. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vQAe0jfzvg&w=630] |
WTF Ubisoft, A Wii Game Where You Have To Make Out In Real Life? | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 24 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxd96qRa6wY&w=640&h=390]
. Watch this video. This is a real game. German, yes — but nevertheless, real. “We Dare is a sexy, quirky, party game that offers a large variety of hilarious, innovative and physical, sometimes kinky, challenges. The more friends you invite to party, the spicier the play!” I don’t understand! If you’re going to have an orgy, why would you play Wii first?! That would just make things awkward! |
NFC Plus Powermat: A Match Made In Heaven, Or Just A Match? | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 24 |
is looking at to their tech that would combine the wireless charging capability with , allowing for low-bandwidth communications while you charge. Sounds kind of weak at first, but really it’s a good match. They both emphasize that wires are, like, 2010. Yes, it’s not that you want to charge where you pay, or you want to buy things while you charge, but that Powermat wants to make its chips and the halo of services related to NFC and the like as robust as possible. Wires are the enemy to Powermat, and anything that makes wires less necessary is good news to them. Right now Powermat stuff is still pretty bulky and expensive. But a smaller, flatter version with integrated NFC is on the way — something that could see inclusion in far more phones for far less money. I’m looking forward to it. |
Hooray: Alan Turing's Papers Successfully Acquired For Public Display | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 24 |
You may not remember, but back in November I about a brave guy who was trying to raise half a million pounds to buy a large lot of notes and papers by the hugely influential logician and computing pioneer . As it turns out he didn’t get near that huge amount, but he did raise quite a bit, which, added to a generous £100,000 from Google and a sum from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, proved to be after they failed to sell at Christie’s. They’ll be on display at the Bletchley Park Museum (Turing’s workplace) after they’ve completed restoration work. Congratulations to all involved. |
Xoom Shows Its Mod-Friendliness With ClockworkMod Install | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 24 |
It was only just released, but the has already been made moddable by Seattle hacker , who installed his ClockworkMod Recovery ROM manager on the device with no problems. Kind of a 180 after all that hullaballoo about the Droid series having s. Root access hasn’t yet been reached, but give these guys a break, it’s only been a day. Once root goes through, however, people will be able to install Windows 95 on these things for all the device cares. Chances are it’ll just be mods allowing deeper file access, non-Market software, and so on, like every other piece of rooted Android hardware. It’s kind of backwards to say this, but I’m looking forward to seeing how Android 3.0 is limited. I mean, it’s not that I want it to be, it’s just another way of saying I wonder where Google decided to set the limits this time. [via ] |
Oops, Facebook Advertiser Gets A Mysterious Bill For $8.8 Million | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 2 | 24 | Social ads on Facebook are supposed to be cheap. In fact, they are one of the cheapest ads on the Web in terms of cost per thousand impressions. So imagine Facebook advertiser Joshua Niamehr’s surprise when he logged into his Facebook ad campaign and saw the following notice: There is an outstanding balance of $8,804,978.14 USD on your account. Your ads will not be displayed until your account is settled. Please enter a valid funding source. When you submit that information, we will charge your funding source for $8,804,978.14 USD. Needless to say, he did not click “Make Payment.” Niamehr’s credit card had expired, which is why his account was delinquent. But his actual outstanding balance was $58.07, not $8,804,978.14. (He was placing ads to market his site ). Facebook did eventually correct itself and showed the correct amount, to Niamehr’s relief. So was that $8,804,978.14 just a glitch. Niamehr thinks the number was too specific for it to be random. His theory: “I think this may be the outstanding balance across all or many of their accounts.” That’s just a theory. But if that’s true, it’s not an inconsequential amount. Maybe Facebook should get into social debt collection. It could offer Facebook Credits to friends of delinquent advertisers who shame them into paying their bills. |
Sony Going All In With Translucent Camera Mirrors | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 24 |
Sony made a surprising announcement today in Spain, saying that all future models of its Alpha line of will . This is an alternative to the standard fully-reflective reflex mirror in most DSLRs that swings out of the way to expose the sensor. Instead, the light mostly the mirror and can be captured without waiting for the reflex module to get out of the way. The a55 and a33 used the technology, and because of bright EVFs instead of optical prism viewfinders, they avoided the problem that prevented translucent mirrors from catching on before. Sony splits off just enough light to use for a phase-detection autofocus system, rather than enough to actually see through the viewfinder. It was a gutsy move and seems to have paid off. The a33 and a55 were pretty decently reviewed, but the fact that such a bold endeavor didn’t totally fail is the important bit. The next camera to sport the “SLT” format (single lens translucent) will the be the a77, a competitor with the Canon 60D and Nikon D7000. It would have 1080p video, 24 megapixels, high ISO capability, and so on. I wish it luck. [via and ] |
Apple Has Significant "Head Start" With Thunderbolt, But Not Exclusive | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 24 | Intel’s new interface, which made its debut this morning in an upgrade to , may be effectively an Apple exclusive for quite some time, according to Intel. At their press release, held shortly after Apple’s update when live, Intel noted that the developer kit for the interface would be provided to other computer manufacturers this spring, and that they didn’t expect OEMs to ship with Thunderbolt until 2012. It’s not exactly an exclusive, but it’s close. That’s a pretty big coup for Apple — assuming Thunderbolt catches on faster than USB 3.0 has, there are no roll-out problems, and plenty of applications. It’s actually a lot to assume, and although Apple is definitely a winner here, there are also some risks involved. First, it’s likely that Apple’s “collaboration” with Intel consists of being the consumer test ground for the technology while it’s too expensive for most people and not significantly better than other options for casual users. Early rumors had Apple being “integral” to the development of (the internal project name for Thunderbolt), but I suspect that was mainly just standardizing and dealmaking. Apple’s burned itself with Firewire, which, while still used by many professionals, is more or less a niche interface compared with USB. Apple likely wanted in on the next thing and volunteered to be the test subject, while contributing very little to the technology itself (apart from designing their boards around it, of course). It’s not like Macs get some kind of special powers out of the interface. Second, the inclusion of this new tech isn’t really beneficial to users the way Apple tends to think of “beneficial to users.” Apple these days has a philosophy of “it just works,” and if it could, would make every port its own proprietary interface just so it would be totally under their control and in consequence totally reliable to all Apple-approved software and hardware. It’s what Steve Jobs’ dreams are made of. But Thunderbolt isn’t a technology that simplifies things — yet. Take a look at the left side of the new MacBooks: Yeah, it’s kind of a jungle when you consider Apple’s keep-it-simple approach to I/O. It’s a transitional period for the hardware, in which Apple can’t leave USB behind because everyone uses it (though why they don’t upgrade to 3.0 is beyond me), can’t leave Firewire behind because it would alienate their hardcore buyers, can’t really include more than one Thunderbolt slot, and can’t use that one for anything but high-speed data (due, ironically, to their early adoption). It’ll be nice for some people to have, but really, the benefit to the average Mac user is minimal; they’ll appreciate the snappy and economical Sandy Bridge processors more. Third, the advantage of exclusivity is pretty minimal, since the tech will be moving on over the next year and the move from copper to fiber will not only increase speed, but time and volume will reduce the cost of the hardware. For the moment, Thunderbolt is unproven, unbranded, and almost unsupported. And what happens if, say, the first batch has troubles? Or if USB 3.0 takes off in the meantime, and people can’t really tell the difference between 5Gb/s and 10Gb/s when they’re transferring a few dozen photos from their camera, or a movie from their external hard drive? If Thunderbolt were a game-changing technology today, Apple would have themselves a genuine victory on their hands. As it is, I think they’re taking a risk being the first to support this young (but promising) tech — not that there’s anything wrong with that. How much of a win this de facto exclusive is will only be clear in hindsight. Now, if the were to have a Thunderbolt port (say, in that mystery spot, otherwise to be a SIM), that might help push things in the right direction. |
Hashable Brings It To SXSW, And The Android | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 24 | Today in … Introduction service , which has the pretty of ridding the world of business cards, is announcing its and a slew of features just in time for the Interactive party event to end all Interactive party events, . In case the message wasn’t loud and clear, its also got a fancy SXSW set up on so I guess its hoping to win the app Super Bowl or some other stupid sports analogy pertaining to being the app with the most SXSW usage. Aside from it now being available for Android users (I kid! I kid!), the Hashable product team has taken a long hard look at what extra features would be useful to the drunken professionals at the conference and has bulked up its core functions of facilitating introductions through Facebook and Twitter, allowing you to search for them by tag and plotting your progress on the Hashcred leaderboard. Both the iPhone and the Android app now allow you to check into Foursquare though Hashable, and “Check-in w/Someone” has replaced the “Post a Connection” option on the app interface. Tapping on the location icon in the options view will bring up a list of venue options, and the checkin will be recorded on both apps provided you link the account in your Hashable profile. Hashable has also simplified its contact exchange function, known as “Just Met,” making it easier to connect with non-Hashable users by entering in their email addresses and Twitter names. The app can then send a “business card” with your contact info over email or Twitter, allowing you to add an optional message or share the connection internally within the app. The app also adds the person to your address book. says Hashable UX designer Oz Lubling about the cloud-based contact trading. Hashable, which builds your network by bringing in existing Hashable users from your address book and Twitter, is also taking a stab at its own version of a social graph with the new “Inner Circle” function, which brings up a stream of #intro and other activity of people you have invited into your circle, so you can see who they’re meeting and where. You can also now post connections when you’re offline, a major plus during the smartphone saturated conference. Interested users sign up for the Android beta The app should be available in the Android marketplace over the weekend.
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Google Targets Content Farms With Major Search Algorithm Tweaks | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 2 | 24 | Google made a substantial revision to its search algorithm today, the . And while no one in particular is being called out, it’s clear that the big losers are content farms and related spammy-content producers who have been having an on Google over the last couple of years. 11.8% of search queries have been “noticeably” updated, says Google – meaning there have been changes in the top 2-3 results. Google is also making it clear that they have not used user data from a recent which lets users block specific sites in Google results that annoy them. Google they’ve compared the data they’ve collected from that extension to the sites most impacted in the new search rollout. 84% of the most blocked sites via the Chrome extension were impacted, they say. What are those sites? Google isn’t saying. But the changes are designed to weed out low-value content, they say, such as content copied from other websites or non-useful content. That means sites like Demand Media, Associated Content and Mahalo are likely on the list. In a couple of months traffic data to those sites will likely confirm that they were impacted. In a post a couple of weeks ago for lack of quality search results, particularly in certain categories like travel and commerce. It’s unclear if these changes will fix all that, but I’m keeping an open mind. And either way, the time when content farms dominated Google search results may be finally coming to an end. Cheers to that. |
Thunderbolt Plus RAID Equals The New Pegasus Drive Towers | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 24 |
is out, and the Thunderbolt-equipped peripherals are coming fast. LaCie has their coming this summer, but if you need more than 500GB of space, you’ll probably want to look elsewhere. Pegasus has you covered with their . Need to have 8TB of storage streaming at 800MB per second? Probably not! But this sucker can do it anyway. There’s no pricing yet, but the units should be available in Q2, so I’d say “springish.” The R6 has six hot-swap bays and the R4 has four. They can take up to 2TB drives (formatting in HFS+ reduces capacity by about 30%), making for a max capacity of… let me get my calculator out… looks like 12TB of raw space, less once you format and so on. You can, of course, daisy chain multiple units for extra capacity. The R4 supports RAID 0, 1, 6, 5, 10, and the R6 with its extra bays gets 50 and 60. Sounds like some serious storage for the speed-conscious user. We’ll let you know when we get pricing on these bad boys. I love that picture up top. The Pegasus is |
Madvertise launches €5m developer fund (sort of but not really) | Steve O'Hear | 2,011 | 2 | 24 | , the Berlin-based mobile ad network, has launched a five million Euro fund for mobile app developers. Only it isn’t really a fund and it certainly isn’t €5m. This one takes a little time to unravel so we’ll save you the effort. What they’re actually offering is to wave their commission on any ads sold for mobile app developers who apply to the program until a total of €5m in ad revenue has been generated via those apps or until 12 months are up (whichever comes sooner). In other words, presuming €5m in mobile ad revenue is generated via apps that are taking part, Madvertise will handover 100% of that cash rather than the normal 60/40 split (in favour of the app publisher, although it varies) that normally takes place. So, basically, the “fund” consists of approximately 40% of €5m give or take and only if all €5m in ad revenue is generated before the time is up. Or at least I that’s how it works. The motivation for this huge giveaway, says Madvertise, is to let mobile app developers and mobile site creators “explore the potentials[sic] of mobile advertising as an income source for their contents[sic]’ That said, it’s not a bad deal either way, even if the announcement is, to put it politely, a little convoluted. For those mobile app developers who want to get in on the deal, . |
Storific raises $200k from Kima Ventures to let customers order in restaurants via iPhone | Steve O'Hear | 2,011 | 2 | 24 | , the French startup that lets customers place orders in restaurants, bars and hotels via an iPhone, has raised $200k in a seed round financed by . The company offers a paid-for subscription service via a browser-based interface where businesses can provide full menus, list their tables and receive notifications from customers ordering by an iPhone. Whilst the consumer-facing iPhone app is, of course, free. The overall idea behind Storific is to make ordering in restaurants as frictionless as possible, reducing costs but also letting front of house staff concentrate more on customer service rather than purely ratcheting up orders. Additionally, follow on orders, such as that second or third coffee or a desert, become more impulsive and therefore revenue increases. That’s the pitch, anyway. To that end, since its private beta launch last December, Storific has been piloting the service with 35 businesses in the US, UK, Belgium, Canada, Italy, Greece and Japan. Furthermore, the company plans to issue 100 free premium invitations to its service for restaurants, bars, clubs and hotels through March 31st. If you’re a business who wants to get in on the iPhone action, you can apply for a free premium invitation . Storific is founded by Michael Cohen, ex-business developer Europe for netvibes.com and Andrés Mejia. Kima Ventures has previously invested in startups such as Paper.li, Rapportive and Sparrow. |
Disposables Debate: Can Recycling, Materials Innovation Make Plastic Bag Bans Obsolete? | Lora Kolodny | 2,011 | 2 | 24 | Single-use plastic grocery bags, and the various and proposed to curb pollution from their disposal, are causing controversy again this week. A newly surfaced study, still under peer review, suggests that disposable bags aren’t as bad for the environment as re-usable cotton bags. The study — by Dr. Chris Edwards and Jonna Meyhoff Fry — was done for a government environmental agency in the UK. As reported by Martin Hickman for its authors found: “[By] assessing pollution caused by extraction of raw materials, production, transportation and disposal…an HDPE plastic bag would have a baseline global warming potential of 1.57 kg Co2 equivalent, falling to 1.4 kg Co2e if re-used once, the same as a paper bag used four times (1.38 kg Co2e). A cotton bag would have to be re-used 171 times to emit a similar level, 1.57 kg Co2e.”
These results make it seem like a shopper would have to use a cotton bag 171 times or more before displacing the equivalent environmental impact of one plastic bag. Contextualizing studies that make disposables look downright green, however, environmental researcher Susan Freinkel — whose book will be out in April — told TechCrunch (via email): “If energy is a top concern, then plastic bags do come out with a nicely ‘green’ profile. But that’s not the only measure of a bag’s environmental impact. Plastic has one big downside: it persists in the environment…Unlike paper or cotton, it doesn’t biodegrade. It only breaks up into smaller and smaller pieces. Persistence is a big deal if you’re concerned about pollution and the health of wildlife. Plastic bags can clog storm drains, which was why Mumbai, among other places decided to ban them. [They] are one of the top categories of beach debris collected in international beach clean-ups every year, according to the annual beach clean-up reports. Wildlife often mistakes plastic bags for food and can choke on [or get entangled in] them— from camels in Dubai to sea turtles in the Pacific.” While startups like are trying to get plastic manufacturers to make their materials less persistent, using high-tech additives and processes, several industry players want to increase plastic bag recycling programs. Unfortunately, though plenty of municipalities and retailers collect plastic bags and polyethylene film for recycling in the U.S. today, it’s still not available everywhere, according to website of the (a strong opponent to regulating plastic bags). — a corporation that massive amounts of plastic bags — created a legislation tracker via to protest bag bans and promote recycling instead. Waste reduction has proven significant in cities and countries where bags have been banned and taxed: Ireland saw a 90 percent reduction in disposable plastic bag use post-regulation ; and San Francisco lowered plastic bag waste citywide by about 20 percent according to the . [Ed’s note: ] Sustainable packaging and bioplastic companies have joined both sides of the debate. , a company that spun out of MIT in the 1990s and now makes renewable crop-derived plastics, along with the Biodegradable Products Institute and many others that would have banned free, disposable plastic bags at large retail outlets in California, for example. Meanwhile, Cereplast sees regulation as a market opportunity. In January this year, the bioplastic company issued a noting: “Stores in Italy alone use approximately 20-24 billion plastic bags a year, which accounts for one-fifth of all European use. This is the equivalent of a potential $1 billion bioplastics market in Italy as manufacturers now have to replace traditional plastic with environmentally-friendly materials.”
Will reusables always trump throw aways when it comes to environmental concerns? Or could clean tech and sustainable packaging innovators give us a net zero, single-use bag? It’s not a material issue, says Freinkel, behavior and context matters too. She wrote: “Comparing the environmental impacts of different type of bags diverts away from the real issue here, namely that the problem isn’t so much the material a bag is made from as the way in which the bag is used. Single-use bags made of any material are a waste of valuable resources. Both paper and plastic single-use bags involve using finite and precious resources that took decades, in the case of trees, and hundreds of millions of years in the case of oil or natural gas to make, to produce something we use for the 15 minutes it takes to get from the grocery store to our front door. Reusable bags are a step away from that throwaway mindset. As long as it can be used over and over, a reusable bag of any type is the best, most sustainable choice.”
Plastic bag in branches, via |
Acme Made's New Clutch And Skinny MacBook Sleeves Now Available At Apple Stores | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 24 |
If you’re in need of a sexy sleeve for your new / , you might consider picking up one of these from Acme Made. I reviewed a couple of their bags a while back and I know them to be pretty solid, with nice materials. These two new entries are available only in Apple Stores, though, so you’ll have to move your feet around to get ’em. The Skinny Sleeve is a lightweight sleeve designed for the MacBook Air 11″. It’s waterproof (at least the parts that cover the laptop are) and has a little padding so your poor little lappy doesn’t get dinged. It’ll set you back $40. The Clutch (top) is designed for a 13″ Air or MacBook Pro, and is made of coated canvas, with leather trim. I like the material, and the metal buckles.
Nice waffle print! Note that this one also has space for a few pens and such, and sports a strap. In person it’s probably something of a man-purse, despite the masculine construction. It’ll set you back $100, which is enough to make a grown man cry. Remember! Only available at Apple stores. They should be there now. |
Online Freight Brokerage Open Mile Raises $6 Million | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 23 | A freight brokerage is a service that brings together someone who wants to to transport goods (like oranges, or iPods) with the trucking company that wants to transport them. , which is today announcing a $6 million round of Series B funding, is the first such service that attempts to bring these relatively unglamorous transactions online, tapping into a $60 billion industry which is heavily phone and fax based. Read: It’s disruptive. The financing was led by and rounded out by existing investor . says Globespan’s Andy Goldfarb on the motivation behind the significant (for the relatively slow-moving industry) investment. What makes the Open Mile platform different from other freight brokerages is that it uses mobile devices to connect thousands of truckers with thousands of shippers, managing the entire process from booking through delivery. And its emphasis on employing innovative technologies allows it to operate at a lower cost than traditional brokers. Right now Open Mile works with over 5,000 trucking companies as partners, connecting them to a wide range of shipping organizations from small to large. Open Mile plans on using the funding to further expand on its engineering and core product efforts, as well as hire into its marketing and sales teams.
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3DS Price Dips Below £200 In UK Price Wars | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 23 | After the 3DS debuted, we saw that the UK pricing was a little… . Even considering VAT, the £229 prices we were seeing seemed rather high. They’ve been dropping, though, and now many retailers are going below £200 — still quite a bit more than the $250 we’re going to get it for here in the states, but getting on towards reasonable. Will we see similar competition here in the states? Nah. I think this particular price war was borne of high early estimates of what retailers should be charging in the UK. The US price is still far lower than the rest of the world’s, and I don’t think you’re going to see below $250 until at least a few months after release. In Japan, official orders at Amazon have long been unavailable, and 3rd-party sellers seem to be selling their units for half again the original price. This isn’t unprecedented; in fact, it’s more or less just how Nintendo launches go over there. Man, I wonder what the first 3D Dragon Quest sales will be like? I added the Afro Kens. If you can swing it, I’d say your best bet is to wait until a joint like GameStop has the 3DS in stock, and bring in your DS for trade-in credit. You’ll get $30-40 retail — really, you’re not going to find it for much under $250 for a while, so you may as well just go for it and sacrifice your old gear. |
New Olympus Compacts Incoming On March 2nd? | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 23 |
A trusted tipster has that is planning on dropping a few new cameras come March 2nd. There’s no more information than that, but what’s this? Forum Olympus France has discovered some . They’re not interchangeable lens models, more in the luxury point-and-shoot zone, but still could be worth your consideration. We’ll keep our eyes open come March and give you the news as soon as we hear it. |
Yahtzee Versus MindJack | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 23 |
I’ve only seen bad reviews of this MindJack game, and is even more savage than usual. It blows my mind that two or three guys can get together and put out something amazing like Braid or World of Goo, yet a couple dozen people manage to take far more money and time and barf out something like this. You don’t even have to make it great, people. Just make an okay game! I remember playing a game called Chaser, which wasn’t good, wasn’t bad, but it had some cool parts, a bargain price, and didn’t try to be anything but a solid shooter. But it seems like the MindJack team decided all they needed was a gimmick, and the rest would take care of itself. |
Review: Motorola Xoom – The Android Tablet Redefined | John Biggs | 2,011 | 2 | 23 |
Few tablets have met with such widespread anticipation as the recently-announced Xoom. It is the closest anyone has come to an equivalent for the Android set. I was impressed with the speed, design, and quality of the device, and although there are a few caveats, I came away optimistic for the new crop of Honeycomb devices that will follow this one.
At first glance, the Xoom is a featureless slab. It comes in black or silver; the 4G version for Verizon is the most US-relevant, but the silver Wi-Fi only version will surely have a presence here as well. The 4G version we reviewed is clad on the back in a sort of rubberized metal and the only ports are a mini-HDMI, micro USB, and a small dual-pin dock connector. The device cannot be powered via USB, instead depending on a Xoom-specific charger. Dual speakers flank the 5-megapixel camera and LED flash combo and there is an almost impossible-to-find power button next to the camera, an odd design choice. The only other physical features are a dual rocker for volume and a small slot for a microSD card that is apparently currently unsupported. The size and shape are strikingly similar to the iPad’s. It is a bit wider and very slightly thinner, although it was oftentimes mistaken by others for Cupertino’s juggernaut. There are two LEDs, one that signals emails and the like on the right side and a small red light that switches on when using the front camera. There is no removable battery. The back panel looks like it could be removed but it holds the screen in place, thus preventing further exploration without voiding the warranty.
In all, the Xoom is an impressive piece of kit. It doesn’t feel as “hollow” as the iPad, perhaps because of the Xoom’s 1.6 lb weight versus the iPad’s 1.4. I was amazed by the Xoom’s dual-core Tegra 2 processor. It is lightning fast and most activities took seconds. It beat the iPad in side-by-side website scrolling tests in many cases. Now for the bad news: if you open too many apps, it slows down to a crawl. The horrors that Apple seems to have avoided in iOS are readily apparent here. I had quite a few app crashes and many apps designed for 2.x devices crashed. Google Body, remade for Honeycomb, crashed every other try. So the good part is that the Xoom is truly a fast machine. The bad part is that this speed is quite fragile. If you are vigilant, you can maintain this speed by selectively closing apps, but the results are often frustrating. We saw this effect in early Android builds as well, and chances are it will be sped up significantly by 3.1 and 3.5. Until then, however, memory management and crashes will be part of your Honeycomb experience. The screen is the real draw on this device. The glossy 10-incher is wonderfully responsive and 1280×800 resolution allows for a great deal of living detail in the interface, icons, and during media playback. Strangely, the resolution didn’t play well with some photos, including photos taken with the Xoom’s own camera; they appeared fuzzy when you’d expect sharpness. I was slightly disappointed at the sample images included with the device but the resolution in the music player and on the UI in general adds considerable crispness to the text and icons on screen. Again, there’s bad news: this thing is amazingly susceptible to fingerprints. The front and the back of the device were a mess after the first few minutes. You will definitely notice an entire jungle of finger tracings and taps if you use the Xoom for any period of time. To be fair, the iPad has this problem too, at least on the front, but it’s worth noting that the Xoom doesn’t improve on it here. It is almost impossible to take photos of the screen, so please excuse some of my more onerously bad shots. For clearer UI shots, of the Honeycomb UI have been making the rounds for months. The speakers are acceptable but are situated on the back of the device so you don’t get much forward throw. You can mute the speakers with your hand if you’re not careful. The optional media dock adds a bit more volume and quality to the audio, if you’re inclined to use this as your out-loud media device. Headphone playback was on par with any other PMP. The camera is on par with any other 5-megapixel concoction and the flash adds a sufficient amount of coloration to dark scenes. The front camera is also fine. You can’t really expect too much from tiny cameras like this, and unlike an iPhone 4 it’s not designed to be a point-and-shoot replacement. Google Video Chat worked quite well, although the “shake reduction” feature was more a gimmick that ensured that the central image was in focus and still while the background was severely truncated. If you set it on high, you get an image like the one above. It’s kind of goofy but in terms of video chat on a mobile device it’s usually handy. Here are some sample images:
Battery life is about 18-20 hours on one charge although your mileage may vary. I was able to listen to a few hours of music, read a book, and browse the web for most of the day and it dropped to about 67% after 10 hours. I couldn’t test video playback due to some problems in format availability, but it’s safe to say your battery life will shrink with more processor-intensive tasks. But using web, music, email, and a little light gaming, the device lasted quite a while. Again, software optimizations in future Android versions may improve this, as they have in the past, but battery life is quite solid as it is. The Xoom has two docks, a standard, smaller one and a larger one with a built-in speaker. It supports Motorola’s Bluetooth keyboard and standard Bluetooth headsets. The keyboard includes keys for home and the pull-down menus, which improves usability considerably. One problem everyone who used this device faced was trying to seat it in the entertainment dock. The two bottom ports were very hard to connect to the corresponding jacks and even with a handy little dot on the bottom of the device and another dot on the dock for lining things up it was quite difficult. A single, wide dock port would have been preferable. There is also a slick Bluetooth keyboard that functions as you would expect. I had some trouble connecting to even strong Wi-Fi connections with this device. For some reason my home network crapped out at two bars almost constantly, and I had much better luck getting a Verizon data connection than depending on Wi-Fi. This could potentially eat into your $20/month 1GB plan. With limited data it’s hard to say whether this is a problem just with my circumstances or if it’s a Xoom-wide issue. I shot a very brief video walkthrough of the interface, below. If you’re familiar with Android, Honeycomb isn’t radically different. It is, however, definitely suited for large screens. Rather than the cramped feel of previous Android versions, the vistas are wide and expansive. The Xoom is an Android tablet, not an overgrown phone. The UI is striking and the use of screen real estate is excellent. Even the unlock process, activated by sliding a little padlock out of a circle, seems to invite you to revel in the screen size. The onscreen keyboard is quite usable with one hand or two. The default screen displays a few frequently used apps including mail, music, and books. There is also a unique video editor with a real jog wheel for scrolling through video. In short, Google has really pushed Honeycomb to the next level in terms of tablet interaction. Apps take up the full widescreen real estate, making programs like Google Body or the Pulse Newsreader far superior to their previous versions. Are there some bumps on the road? Sure. Some of the features are a bit gimmicky, including an odd 3D effect that occurs when you move the device in the Gallery app. Viewed head-on the images look flat but turning the device sideways shows that they sit on a stack of nearly indiscernible cards. It’s a cute trick, but unnecessary. The other problem occurs when you run earlier Android apps. Twitter seems to look and work fine but games like truly execrable Super Android Brothers, a SMB clone, looked over-aliased and grainy. Like iPhone apps run on the iPad, the results are not excellent. The home screen is the most unique aspect of Honeycomb and the one you’ll notice first. The widgets and apps, thanks to the large, high-res screen, can be placed anywhere on the screen. When the screens are empty, in fact, the entire interface seems quite empty, a blank canvas. UI sensitivity is quite snappy and you’re apple to switch back to home thanks to a set of buttons in the lower left corner. The back button and home button is always visible and an app switch appears in some cases. You access your entire app library from the home screen by pressing a button on the top right corner and the notifications, as is Android’s wont, are excellent and unobtrusive. Thanks to the Tegra 2 processor, long lists of emails, Tweets, and the like scroll with a surprising speed, especially if you’ve used previous Android tablets. The kit also includes Google Maps, Latitude, and Navigation and includes A-GPS support for these apps. The device is a bit big for navigation, although Google Maps is a great way to plan a route through a strange city while sitting in a Seine-side cafe. This version of Honeycomb does support Flash. The Xoom will support Flash in a few months, which is kind of hilarious seeing as that was one of Motorola’s original selling points. Regardless, you probably won’t miss it. The Xoom offered a very frustrating media playback experience. While the music I placed on the device played back without a hitch, the video refused to play. I uploaded a few AVIs of various sizes, including some that worked on previous versions of Android. I was unable to solve the problem with Motorola but I’ll keep trying. Formats and codecs are difficult, and while Apple’s restrictive re-encoding and resolution limitations are inconvenient, at least it’s easy for the end user to simply say “okay, make this play on my device.” It’s more difficult on Honeycomb, but that will probably smooth out with time. In terms of business usability, the Xoom is great for basic functions like email, PIM, and some text editing. There are very few apps on board, though you can access QuickOffice in the Marketplace. The email client is very robust and usable, however, and the contact and calendar apps are too, if a bit flashy. They sync with Google Apps.
The Xoom is a great tablet. If you’ve been waiting for an Android equivalent to the iPad, this is will probably satisfy you. The speed of the processor, the beautiful screen, the non-nonsense design, and usability make it a winner. If you and I were sitting at a bar and talking about tablets, I’d say this and the iPad were the two to look into . That will change once other manufacturers start shipping, but this device is a complete, dedicated device for media intake and web surfing.
The pricing of this thing, $600 with two year contract or $800 without, is a bit tough to swallow considering the total cost of ownership over two years, although the higher price is partially justified by specs that are truly superior to the iPad’s. There are going to be plenty of Honeycomb fish in the sea pretty soon, friends, and the Xoom is but a bit player in Android’s steady march towards world domination. What does that mean for dedicated Androidites? Well, you have to decide: do you like Motorola and Verizon or would you prefer to wait for any of the future devices slated to drop in the next few months? The Galaxy Tab 10.1 in particular shares almost all of the Xoom’s specs. The Xoom also isn’t yet for business users. I’d be concerned about Flash support as well as potential app incompatibility or instability.
I asked and found a number of folks who were very excited by the device. I, personally, think it’s a great leap forward for Android on the tablet and makes devices like the Android 2.2 look like antediluvian technology. Again, this is the first of many 3.x tablets to visit their reigns of glory upon us. Is it – or will it be – the best Honeycomb tablet out there? I doubt it, but Motorola has offered a strong showing out of the gate and I was very impressed at the build quality and attention to detail, at least when it came to UI and physical design. The odd ports on the bottom are a bit of a concern, but otherwise the device is quite capable. If you literally can’t wait, this is a great tablet for you. But a few months may bring changes to the Honeycomb market that will make it less of a coup and more of an also-ran.
Video music by . |
Home-Built Force Feedback Machine Rocks And Rolls You While Playing Dyad | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 23 | [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/20277439 w=620&h=349]
It’s amazing what some people can cook up in their spare time. For some, it’s the great American novel. For others, it’s meth. For yet others it’s a that’s designed around playing your trippy indie racing/shooter/puzzle game. Yes, the creator of , a cool-looking game that will be shown at PAX East, has also constructed an enormous projector-chair-arcade cabinet that you sit in to play. It moves around and jolts you like those expensive racing game we’ve seen at CES and E3, but it’s totally home-made and uses sheets, cables, and plywood. Yeah, that’s pretty awesome. [via ] |
Japanese Arcade Documentary 100 Yen Hits This Fall | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 23 | [vimeo 15861064 w=640 h=360] from on . Here’s a success story of the crowdsourced variety. 100 Yen, a documentary project looking at arcade culture in Japan, has garnered all the cash it needs (via ) to finish shooting, edit, and distribute their film, and it should get a release this fall. I don’t think you’ll be seeing it at your local multiplex, but I bet your local indie flick joint would host a showing if you can sell a few tickets. I’m looking forward to seeing it — the in-person social and competitive aspect of gaming is really different over there, and although we in the US play a ton of multiplayer, it’s still a very experience. I think the differences reflect differences between American and Japanese cultures as well, and probably simple facts like Tokyo’s insane population density come into it as well. |
Huzzah! Android 2.2 Comes To AT&T Captivates Tomorrow | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 23 |
Excuses have been made, and delays explained away, but it seems that AT&T’s variant of the Galaxy S will be getting Froyo tomorrow. AT&T , saying that instructions will be posted tomorrow to Facebook. There are final builds floating around right now, but I think after waiting all these months, you poor guys can wait one more day. [via and ] |
Disney Acquires Social Network For Kids Togetherville | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 2 | 23 | Disney has just acquired a social network for kids 10 years of age or younger, we’ve confirmed with the company. Terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed at the moment. Togetherville, which last year, mimics the experience of adult social networking sites, i.e. Facebook but in an age-appropriate and parent-monitored environment. Togetherville promises a safer, more secure environment, where parents can moderate who their children are connecting with. Parents approve each of their child’s friends, and can also connect with other parents using Facebook’s social graph. Parents can easily interact with their kids in Togetherville, while kids have their very own social community and login to engage with friends, play games, watch videos, and create art. Children create “neighborhoods” from Facebook friends, and can connect through , which allows parents and kids connect with school friends without requiring the parents to be connected via Facebook. We were tipped off on the acquisition by a reader. The site’s , it states: “Welcome to the Internet sites of the Walt Disney Internet Group (“WDIG”). “WDIG Sites” include Disney.com, ABCNEWS.com, ABC.com, ESPN.com, DisneyShopping.com, Go.com, Movies.com, FamilyFun.com, and other Internet sites on which these terms of use are posted.” Another clue is CEO and founder Mandeep Dhillon’s , which now states he is “Vice President, Togetherville at The Walt Disney Company.” Disney’s past acquisitions include , and |
null | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 2 | 24 | null |
Dailymotion shoots for video-powered apps, slowly opening up developer API | Steve O'Hear | 2,011 | 2 | 23 | , the French-born video site and YouTube competitor, has quietly launched a public Application Programming Interface (API) for third-party apps that want to integrate some, if not all, of its features. Available as an SDK for JavaScript, PHP and Objective C (iPhone, iPad and Mac), with ActionScript (Flash) and Python also under development, Dailymotion’s initial API offering, however, appears to be a work-in-progress. The company says that it will “eventually” support the full gamut of Dailymotion’s core functionality, including video upload, playlists, channels etc. offering the ability to integrate “Dailymotion modules” into any site or application, such as on iPhone, iPad, Android, Bada, and Windows Phone. It’s interesting to see Dailymotion finally get around to offering a public API, something that Google-owned YouTube has had for yonks. There also seems to be a significant emphasis on mobile apps, which makes a lot of sense given the trend towards consuming content on the go and the advent of tablets but also now that a large share of Dailymotion is owned by Orange. Last month the telco for approximately €59 million with an option to purchase the rest of Dailymotion at a later date. Although, , the deal looked an awful lot like the French government selling a company to itself, with both Dailymotion and France Telecom-owned Orange in part backed by Fonds Stratégique d’Investissement (FSI), the French government’s sovereign wealth fund. |
BookArc for MacBook Air: Make Your MBA Stand Up And Take Notice | John Biggs | 2,011 | 2 | 23 | Twelve South makes cool, if simple, laptop gear. We’ve covered their before and this is an improved permutation of the version for the latest Air. It costs $39.99 and allows you to stand your laptop up next to a monitor and control the cabling so everything is in its right place. From the product description: Like previous versions of BookArc, the MacBook Air model is fashioned from heavy gauge steel for stylish looks and a sturdy footprint. One convenient addition is built-in cable management. Since MacBook Air has inputs on both sides, the BookArc cable housing routes power, external display, USB and other cables behind the MacBook for a clean workspace. These cables stay tethered to the stand so you can easily get your Mac in and out quicker than ever. |
PS3 Gets NTFS Support | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 2 | 23 |
This isn’t big news to anyone but hackers, but I wanted to include it just as a “ahhh yeah” shout-out to all the people fighting to use their hardware however they like. The PS3 is limited to FAT32 formatting, but , you can now hot-swap NTFS-formatted drives, making home development and backup easier — as well as perhaps allowing for easier playback of large video files. [via – wait, PS3Crunch?!] |
Foursquare's SXSW Plan: "NEW APP + NEW BADGES + PARTIES + CONCERT + MOAR" | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 2 | 23 | We’re now just over two weeks away from this year’s event in Austin, Texas. And just as is the case every year, there will be several startups jockeying to be the one that is the breakout hit. But one of those previous breakout hits, , isn’t standing still either. In a ridiculously awesome on the matter today, Foursquare hints at their plan for the event this year. Here’s the entire post entitled “OMFG!”: SXSW IS LESS THAN THREE WEEKS AWAY! NEW APP + NEW BADGES + PARTIES + CONCERT + MOAR FOURSQUARE. DETAILS COMING. OKTHXBAI. Translation: there will be a new version of their app. There will be more badges to earn at the event. There will be a party (or maybe more than one?). And that party will likely feature a high-profile concert of some sort. And there will more that we’ll learn about shortly. It was two years ago at the same event that Foursquare (and rival ) actually for the first time. And last year, the two to the death during the event for location-based supremacy. While the wasn’t so clear at the time (helped by the fact that Gowalla is Austin-based), Foursquare now far more users Gowalla. And so we probably shouldn’t expect the same time of war this year. But that doesn’t mean they won’t have a few new tricks. Both have numerous things planned for this year, we hear. The early whispers about Foursquare are that their app should feature significant speed improvements, and perhaps some new recommendation layer, on top of a few other new features. Still, I’ll probably be more focused on the group texting app blood bath that is . |
Twitter Starts Hiring Sales People In London – But Stays Coy About A Euro HQ | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 2 | 23 | There’s been a lot of speculation in recent months about where would put down a European base in its efforts to expand its operation. Certainly I’ve been bugging them in the last few weeks about whether they would come to London. But now we have the answer: London it is – at least for five people whose jobs will be largely about sales and commercial partnerships. |
Proliferation Of PGP Complicates Job Of Federal Investigators | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 2 | 23 | Given that enabling PGP encryption is as easy as ticking a few boxes in both Mac OS X and Windows, it’s no surprise that are now to combat the scourge of people wanting to keep their private data . For starters, new Secret Service recruits are given a one-week crash course in computer forensics, presumably so agents will be able to say with confidence, “Oh, dear, this drive is encrypted, better call my supervisor.” As you can imagine, trying to get the data off a drive that’s been encrypted—PGP is the preferred method—isn’t the easiest thing in the world. Beyond begging the owner for the decryption password, which the FBI did back in 2009 when it wanted to inspect the contents of a hard drive suspected of having child pornography, you can to bruteforce it, but who has the time? You can expect border patrol to have the computing power to bruteforce a PGP’d drive right there on the spot. An average length password (seven or eight characters) would take as long as an entire year to crack. That’s not exactly practical. There are other options. Whereas the traditional way of saving data on a malfunctioning hard drive would be to turn the system off, thinking that you could “freeze” in place whatever data is on there, the best course of action when dealing with an encrypted drive is to keep the system . At least there’s a chance the decryption password is still loaded in memory, and then you can try to retrieve said password. |
Apple Keelhauls Music Streaming Services | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 2 | 15 | Lots of hullabaloo about Apple’s . The basics – everyone pays 30%, you can’t charge more on the iPhone for the product than you do on other platforms, and you can’t link out from the app to the browser to handle subscriptions without Apple being in the middle. It’s not even clear that apps will be able to just post a message telling people to create an account from their computer and then come back to their iPhone and use the app. That’s all well and good for apps that have zero marginal costs. But for some content providers, specifically the music streaming services like MOG, Rhapsody, Rdio, etc., this is crushing. It effectively pushes them off the iPhone, iPad and other iOS devices. They’ve been . That’s because they don’t have 30% margins to begin with, the labels and publishers take somewhere around $8 of the $10 subscription fee. We saw Rhapsody balk at Apple earlier today. On Wednesday morning, we hear, most of the online music streaming services will be issuing a joint statement condemning the policy. Does Apple’s move violate antitrust laws? The Wall Street Journal probably not. Of course, if Apple now launches their own music streaming service, that may change. Apple will be the only company that doesn’t have to pay Apple’s 30% subscription fee, so they’ll be the only company that can offer a $10/month music streaming service without losing money on every user. How does this all play out? We hear the music labels are torn between waging an all out legal war against Apple and just capitulating and lowering their fees enough to keep the streaming services in business. The problem isn’t that Apple is asking for 30%. It’s that the apps can’t charge more to cover those costs. In the end Apple may get what they’re asking for, but if they do it will only be because the labels cave and because Android has gained so much market share that Apple may be able to effectively beat an antitrust action. |
Paperless Billing Service Doxo Raises $10 Million In Series B Funding | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 2 | 15 | Paperless billing is one of those things that is slower to take hold than it should, but it just seems inevitable that is how we all will be receiving our bills sooner or later. One startup trying to speed along the paperless era is , which just raised a $10 million. The Series B financing was led by , with previous investors and participating. Thomas Layton, the former CEO of OpenTable from 2001 to 2007, also invested and is joining Doxo’s board of directors. Greg Gretsch from Sigma is also taking a board seat. This round brings the total raised by Doxo to $15 million since it was founded in 2008. As I the service last year: Doxo is a cloud-based service which works in tandem with existing paperless billing systems, but aims to be much simpler and appealing for consumers. It will be a single place where all your most critical transactional records (bills, statements, explanation of benefits) will be stored on your behalf. And you can be notified any number of ways, via email, mobile apps, SMS, and so on. Businesses pay about $10 a year per customer to send paper bills. Doxo aims to greatly reduce that cost, and gives consumers one place to manage all their paperless bills. Companies offering Doxo as a billing option include Sprint, Kansas City Power & Light, and Puget Sound Energy. The service is still invite-only, but if you want to try it out enter the code “techcrunch” . |
IBM Jeopardy Challenge Day Two Report: Spoiler Alert! | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 2 | 15 | OK, let’s try this . What we have here is a quick summary of night two of the IBM Jeopardy Challenge, starring and two other past Jeopardy champions. There will be spoilers, so West Coasties are encouraged to watch for the time being. Are you ready? Because here come the spoilers. At the end of last night the totals stood at $5,000 Watson and Brad Rutter, while Ken Jennings had $2,000. Watson opened night two absolutely crushing his human competition, opening the scoring and not looking back for several straight minutes. Watson wagered some $6,000 and change in the first Daily Double—he got it! The first few minutes were simply outstanding for those of us cheering for Watson. And how weird it was to see in the audience cheering on the A.I. Our only hope is that Watson doesn’t rebel against his masters and cause a bit of havoc à la (not that I’m altogether opposed to a robot takeover, mind you). The night ended with Watson at $35,734 Brad Rutter at $10,400, and Ken Jennings at $4,800 after an exciting round of final Jeopardy in which Watson, bizarrely, thought Toronto was a U.S. city. Until tomorrow! |
Want To Buy Into A Hollywood Movie? Now You Can | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 2 | 15 | A company called has filed to go public with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and are selling $10/share preferred stock to people who want to invest in the movie they’re creating. The movie is called “ “: “Lydia Slotnick Unplugged” is a comedy about an up and coming executive at a hip music TV network. When Lydia’s dream job becomes available, it’s a toss up between her and a skater-punk named Gator. Their boss favors Gator because he’s worried that Lydia’s lost her edge. So, Lydia decides to prove that she’s still got it by revealing the gritty story of her idol, legendary 70s rocker, Graham McGuiness. Graham has spent the past 30 years in a fog of alcohol and self-pity. He’s trying to find that elusive lost chord to become successful again. In a frantic race to uncover Graham’s past, Lydia learns an incriminating secret, which would make perfect material for a top-rated show. But she has to decide whether to use it to secure her promotion or destroy the evidence to save the reputation of her idol. Sound good to you? Then you’ll definitely want to invest. Because the movie will only be made if they raise the full $8 million. Your minimum purchase is 2 shares, for $20. Here’s what you get – your money back + 7% if the movie makes a profit. Any profit over 7% is shared 50/50 between the investors and the people behind the company. If the movie makes less than $8 million, all of it goes back to the investors. Don’t expect a free ticket to see the movie, though. From the FAQs: “Do I get to see the completed movie for free? No. A distribution arrangement will preclude such a large number of complimentary tickets or DVDs.” You also won’t be allowed on set, but you will get to download clips of the movie. Also note that the stock won’t be listed on Nasdaq or any other exchange, so you won’t be able to sell these shares very easily once you’ve invested. |
Roqbot Is A Jukebox On Your iPhone | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 15 | Something unusual happened last Friday night at here in San Francisco. When I walked in, the entire room was fixated on on a screen above the bar, which displayed what looked like a musical game but wasn’t karaoke. The game? , a unique that allows you to yes, pick the music playing at a bar. Like a combination and traditional jukebox, Roqbot allows you to control the tunes without getting up from where you’re sitting. The inspiration for Roqbot came when one of the co-founders got frustrated using the jukebox at a bowling alley — Every time he had to walk across the bowling alley he would miss his turn. Roqbot, which shares the space with jukebox networks and is the first startup that I’ve seen experimenting with bringing social music to real life businesses like bars and cafes. Up until now plenty of people have deployed this concept for private settings, but no one has touched public because of the many challenges involved. Co-founder Garrett Dodge says Roqbot isn’t actually competing with jukeboxes, but with iPods. Playing an iPod at a cafe or a bar has its disadvantages, namely that the staff gets tired of listening to the same music day in and day out (anyone who has ever worked in a store knows how hellish this can be around Christmas-time) and that customer requests are never heard. There is also the legal issue of music licensing fees when playing personal music in a public setting. With Roqbot you can check in at a participating venue as well as publish your checkins and music picks to Twitter, Foursquare, Last.fm and Facebook. You can select a song to play using Roqbot credits that you can buy with Amazon, Paypal or your Credit Card through your phone. The app offers you a comprehensive list of popular music to choose from, including some that will please the cranky indie music snob you’ve dragged along. If you’re having trouble deciding what to play you can pick from curated lists like “Highest Rated of all time,” “Most Played of All Time” and yes “Top 80s.” Participating venues have their own dashboards within the app and aspiring DJs can navigate through “Now Playing” “Next Up” “DJs” and “Specials” homescreens. On the “Next Up” screen, a Digg-like interface allows you to thumb up and thumb down songs, increasing or decreasing people’s DJ ratings with each vote (and it gets heated). Likewise people can vote your picks up or down, which affects your own DJ rating as well as your position in line. For extra Roqbot credits you can set your musical picks to “Priority Pick” which moves them up in the queue. says founder Garrett Dodge, True. Roqbot also gives away all the equipment for free to venues, including the entire catalogue of five million fully-licensed songs (one of the co-founders has a background in IP law and one of their advisors used to be the CEO of Sony Music). The Roqbot beta can be from the iPhone, but can only be used at Bar Basic in San Francisco which I highly suggest if you’re in the area. Dodge plans on launching the alpha for both the Android and iPhone platform in March, offering it for free to people planning parties at SXSW. Roqbot is currently bootstrapped. Image:
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TechStars Network Wants One Startup Application To Rule Them All | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 2 | 15 | Applying to startup programs these days is a little like applying to colleges. There are so many of them, it is hard to decide which ones to try to get into. wants to streamline that process, at least for founders applying to any of the 20 or so accelerators in the . The TechStars Network was recently launched as part of the White House’s initiative to spur entrepreneurship. TechStars wants to create a unified startup application for all the seed accelerators in the TechStars Network. This would be an online application which would allow entrepreneurs to apply to multiple startup programs within the network. Presumably the different accelerators would compete for the best candidates just as colleges compete for the best students. And startups that don’t fit into one program may find a home in another with less friction. The development of the universal application is being by a Kauffman Foundation grant of $200,000, and it will be made available to other startup programs not part of the TechStars Network. That means other startup programs such as Y Combinator or the Founder Institute could end up using it if they want. |
#MWC11 – Telefonica's head of R&D on how startups could innovate on carrier platforms (TCTV) | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 2 | 15 | Telefonica has a big reach. It is the the world’s third largest operator behind China Mobile and Vodafone. But while everyone is talking about the massive shift in the world of mobile eco-systems, as Nokia and Microsoft get into bed together, it’s less widely known that Telefonica is embracing the radical shift towards the long tail of developers and startups epitomised by the new world of apps and app stores. To that end it’s recently launched a developer platform called . This enables developers to tie their applications or mobile websites into APIs which can enable carrier billing, user profiling or even analytics. The big shift is that developers are charged nothing to use the APIs. The revenue split is also pretty good: 70% if your application is in their own App Store, and you get 70% of subscription fees if the app uses recurring billing. You can also reap 20% of incoming SMS fees, and 10% of outgoing SMS fees. So SMS-enable you app, tie it in to BlueVia and start watching the cash roll in. Well, maybe! The first features are available with O2 Litmus in the UK, Open MovilForum in Spain, Movistar Developers Platform in Mexico and Plataforma do Desenvolvedores Vivo in Brazil. But a roll-out is planned globally and it’s tied into the OneAPI platform promoted across carriers by the GSMA. BlueVia represents a smart way for Telefonica to interact with startups and app developers – because it represents a revenue opportunity for apps outside of just the normal App store approach and can actually sit along side apps. At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, I caught up with Carlos Domingo, head of research and development at Telefonica and asked not not only about BlueVia but also about where the carriers will fit in the brave new world of the mobile eco-systems. |
Duke Nukem Forever Pre-Order Bonuses Include Spiffy Hat | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 2 | 15 | You know that will be released on May 3 (barring some sort of alien invasion), but do you know what sort of are in store? You do now~! Like with most games these days—annoyingly, I might add—separate bonuses will be available at separate stores. At mighty GameStop you’ll get a bit of exclusive DLC: an in-game ego boost, big head mode, and a t-shirt pack. Meh. At mighty Walmart you’ll get a nifty Duke Nukem Forever trucker hat. I think I’m right in saying that trucker hats are a few years out of that ironic style situation, but I’d still rate the hat higher than the DLC. That’s the only such pre-order bits announced. That said, there’s also the Duke Nukem , which includes a good amount of , to be fair, not least of which is a of Duke himself. I’d love to see magazine scans from the late 1990s previewing the game, and seeing how it compares to the final product. Anyone have old issues of GamePlayers or GamePro laying about? |
The Simple (And Perhaps Harsh) Reality Of Apple's Ecosystem | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 2 | 15 | In my previous post about Apple’s new subscription plans for the App Store, I offered up three possibilities. With the move, Apple is either: . But reading over the comments on that post (admit it, you did — it’s okay, I do too, ), you might think there was a fourth option: evil. To those who have followed tech news for any extended length of time, this is a familiar refrain. Company X changes something, therefore Company X is “evil”. Over the years, this has been true of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, etc. But no company has seen this vitriol to the extent of Apple over the past few years. And curiously, it seems correlated to their meteoric rise in power and profitability. But if Apple is really evil — or at the very least, if several major moves they’ve made over the past few years have been evil — shouldn’t the opposite be true? Shouldn’t Apple be losing a ton of customers who are fed up with their cruelty and inhumane torture of developers, users, and the world in general? Makes sense, right? Welcome to reality, conspiracy theorists, loons, and occasional TechCrunch commenters. This latest maneuver by Apple, and several other of their recent “evil” moves, can actually be explained quite easily. Apple isn’t out to trick everyone and eventually screw them over. Instead, Apple has perfected the art of making money. To some, that will still seem evil. Hell, to a few that will likely seem synonymous with evil. But that’s an extremely myopic view of things. The absolute key to Apple’s ability to make money is the ability to make products that customers want. This includes both their tangible hardware products, the software that runs on them, and the underlying infrastructure that fuses it all together. And that includes things like the App Store, which today’s latest change affects. Apple makes good products that people want, so they make a lot of money. The two are absolutely tied together. If they didn’t do the former, they wouldn’t get the latter. To be clear, I’m not convinced that the subscription changes announced today backfire against Apple — that was the point of the previous article. But given Apple’s recent track record, there’s every reason to believe that they won’t. Further, there are plenty of reasons to believe that Apple is making a smart bet here. Apple is betting that the allure of being tied into their incredibly efficient iTunes payment ecosystem (along with its 100 million + accounts tied to credit cards) will outweigh the downside of having to pay them a 30 percent fee. The same 30 percent fee they currently take from the thousands of app developers collectively making billions of dollars off of the App Store. And the same 30 percent fee they currently take for all other types of in-app purchases. You don’t hear those developers complaining about Apple’s cut. But this situation is different because it’s a de-facto change in policy. Actually, wording in their app guidelines has suggested for some time that Apple would move to filter all purchases made on their iOS devices through their in-app payment system. They just hadn’t enforced it until now. But now that they have a system in place to do that, they’re going to do it. For many developers, this is a harsh reality. But is it evil? Regardless of what I write or what anyone else says about this issue, here’s the actual situation: if this is a mistake, people will reject it. Both users and developers will have the chance to vote. But they won’t vote with their mouths. They’ll vote with their wallets. If Apple is in the wrong here, developers will stop developing for iOS (a privilege which they pay Apple $99 a year for on top of the 30 percent app sales cut). And customers will stop buying iOS products. Those two factors will amplify one another. And the Apple ecosystem will wither. There’s simply no reason for developers to develop for a company that is evil to them. And there’s no reason for customers to buy products from a company that is evil to them. There are other options out there. And those options will only continue to sprout. And people will walk away from Apple. But allow me to state the obvious: with all the other “evil” changes Apple has made, this hasn’t happened. In fact, the opposite has happened. Apple has continued to sell more and more of their products and their ecosystem has exploded into a juggernaut. Apple is so “evil” that they have more users than ever giving them more money than ever. Either the entire world is brainwashed or most users interpret these maneuvers as a part of Apple’s overall goal to make products that are consumer-friendly. Which, again, in turn, makes them money. A lot of it. You could certainly make the case that the subscription changes could harm consumers if Amazon or Netflix or other developers decide to pull their apps from the App Store. That’s exactly why I’m not sure this won’t backfire (would Amazon really be okay giving Apple a 30 percent cut?!). But on paper, the main change to push for streamlined in-app payments is a big time benefit for consumers. And if the others play ball, that’s all the consumers will see: yet another system developed by Apple that is better than every other system out there. And that’s exactly why the inevitable antitust talk (that has !) is for the most part ridiculous. This is a free market that both developers and consumers are free to walk away from — and towards a competitor. A number of people today seem to believe that Apple’s move will force companies to raise their prices by 30 percent across the board. That would be totally ridiculous, completely unacceptable, and worthy of an antitrust inquiry. But why on Earth would they do that when they can just put their products on Android or BlackBerry or webOS? Looking ahead, the more I think about it, the more I think that may be the one (potentially) big vulnerability in Apple’s plan. The requirement that prices must the the same or less than they are elsewhere on the web might have to be altered eventually. But that will be the case if rival products by competitors fail to produce an paid app ecosystem to compete with Apple’s. But again, that would not be a case of Apple being evil. It would be a case of them building a natural monopoly similar to the way Google has done that in search. Still, natural or not, just like Google, Apple would then have to be careful about what policies they implemented. With great power, comes great responsibility, and all that. But we’re not there yet. It does look like competition is coming — and fast. And so Apple should be allowed to implement the changes to their ecosystem as they see fit. The market will decide if they’re the right ones or not. And that really is the key to all of this. It’s so obvious, but so many seem to be looking past it. Apple is not the great dictator of the world. We’re all free to not buy their products and to use other ones. But despite all the bluster about Apple being “evil” over the past several years, this has not happened. And it’s because they’re not evil. They’re simply a free market machine churning out great product after great product thanks to (and not in spite of) many of the policies they put in place. But that could all change tomorrow. We’re in control, not them. Welcome to reality. |
Is Microsoft Prepping For A Zune Retirement Party? | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 2 | 15 | The world needed the . Hell, Apple needed the Zune. Microsoft better not kill off the Zune. Too bad it’s already as good as cooked. Bye bye, Zune. We’ll miss you. As , Microsoft suits are seemingly avoiding using the platform’s name lately. It’s a bit strange seeing how the Zune brand is fairly important to Windows Phone 7. The mobile phone platform uses the Zune name for all things media. But it’s still odd that not only are Microsoft executives not talking about the brand, but also the absence of talk was noticed. Chances are if anything is changing, the brand will survive. It’s the physical media players that might get the pink slip. And that sucks. The Zune launched as the anti-iPod. It was brown instead of white. You rented music instead of buying it. It was Microsoft’s attempt to think different. It worked. The Zune was a winner even if the sales numbers don’t agree. The Zune products kept up with the iPods in storage and specs for some time. Even the Zune HD countered the iPod touch nicely until Apple ultimately trumped Microsoft with the App Store — and then FaceTime. The Zune products still stands as one of the best portable media players on the market. The Zune HD is a rock-solid device sold at a fair price. But it’s likely on its way out. Microsoft is moving forward hard with Windows Phone 7. Zune products never sold all that well anyway. Microsoft was always in contention for the number two spot in the PMP race. Apple of course held a massive chunk of the market, but SanDisk, Rio, Samsung, Philips, Archos, and eventually Sony were fighting for second place. The Zune is about the only memorable device to stand strong against the iPod horde. It’s still number 13 on Amazon’s Bestselling MP3 player’s list. Only cheap SanDisk players separate it from the iPods. It’s hard to imagine the Steve Jobs & Co. didn’t follow the Zune closely. The Zune Marketplace subscription comes to mind as . But the hardware, the interface, the whole platform was on par with Apple’s when it debuted. Apple likely saw that its touch products needed something different and more storage wasn’t the key. It was the App Store, which is about the only reason currently to buy an iPod touch of a Zune HD. Apps later debuted on the Zune HD but some two years later, there’s still only a tiny fraction available. The Kin’s death shows that Microsoft isn’t letting sub-par platforms survive. It’s make it big or hit the road now, and well, the Zune MP3 player is probably on the way out. The Zune name will live on. It’s part of the Xbox 360 ecosystem. Windows Phone 7 uses the brand for locally-stored media. The name is important to Microsoft. The MP3 player isn’t. It’s still possible that the long-rumored Zune HD2 will surface (maybe at SXSW) and lead a valiant charge towards the iPod touch. But the timing feels off. Even Apple has slowed the progress of its large format media players and now with Nokia in Microsoft’s camp, smartphones will likely suck up all the dev juice. Microsoft the Zune team back in 2009. The majority went into the Interactive Entertainment Business division that also oversees the Xbox. A smaller chunk went with the WinMo 6.5 people. Whatever the future holds for the Zune, hopefully these people were at least internally recognized for their product. The Zune, and later the Zune HD, are fantastic. Too bad the same can’t be said about Windows Phone 7 yet. |
Linux Foundation announces the Android Builders Summit | Scott Merrill | 2,011 | 2 | 15 |
Everyone and their brother seems to be coming out with some kind of powered doohickey. This is generating a fair amount of fatigue in consumers, as well as developers, as they grapple with the differing features in each vendor’s Android product. The hopes to help remedy some of this with their upcoming Android Builders Summit, April 13-14 in San Francisco. This isn’t some Android Users Group potluck, but rather “an intimate forum for collaboration at the systems level and discussion of core issues and opportunities when designing Android devices.”
I’m a big fan of the promise of Android, because it’s basically the same promise that Linux offers, and in the end the availability of options drives interesting developments. I share everyone else’s frustrations that OEMs continue to cripple the base system by forcing users to use crappy custom interfaces or branded apps. I don’t expect the Android Builders Summit to remedy these issues immediately, but I’m really glad to see that is making an effort to build teamwork and collaboration amongst Android developers. The Android Builders Summit takes place at the same time as the Linux Foundation’s Embedded Linux Conference, so there’s sure to be some interesting overlap between the two camps. New event brings together OEMs, device makers, systems builders and kernel community to collaborate on the Android platform SAN FRANCISCO, February 16, 2011 — The Linux Foundation, the non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the first ever AndroidÔ Builder Summit taking place in San Francisco April 13-14, 2011. The event was created at the request of The Linux Foundation’s members to facilitate collaboration at the systems level. It is co-located with the 2011 Embedded Linux Conference and is open to all. The Android market is one of the fastest growing areas in all of technology today. The Linux-based operating system’s (OS) global market share on smart phones is surpassing that of Apple iOS, and the release of Android 3.0 (also known as “Honeycomb”) is poised to drive the same trend in the tablet market. The Android Builder Summit will help advance the technology that sits at the very core of each Android device while accelerating the adoption of Linux throughout the consumer devices market. The Android Builders Summit is a technical summit for Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), their device manufacturers, integrators, custom builders, and the growing Android and Linux Kernel developer communities. The Summit will provide an intimate forum for collaboration at the systems level and discussion of core issues and opportunities when designing Android devices. Summit topics will include: custom builds, alternative middleware, network functionality extensions, Peer to Peer frameworks, USB device support, security, unification of power management, tools and hybrid Android devices among many other topics. To submit a proposal for the Summit, please visit: “Linux is providing the foundation on which next-generation devices are being built, and Android is one of the most shining examples of how successful this model can be,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “We’re pleased to facilitate collaboration among the Android’s ecosystem participants and drive innovation at the systems level of the platform.” To register for the Android Builder Summit, or to get more information about speaking or sponsorship opportunities, please visit: Android training classes offered by The Linux Foundation will be taking place directly after the Android Builder Summit. For more information, please visit: . For ongoing training opportunities for Android developers, please visit: . The Linux Foundation fosters innovation by hosting events for the Linux technical and business communities. These events help solve pressing issues facing Linux and fuel collaboration and communication between all members of the Linux ecosystem: developers, users, industry, ISVs and distribution vendors. Other Linux Foundation events include a mix of industry and community conferences such as its annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, LinuxCon (North America, Europe, Japan and Brazil) and the Kernel Summit, among others.
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Javelin Venture Partners Closes New $105 Million Fund | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 2 | 15 | Early-stage VC Javelin Venture Partners has closed a second, $105 million fund. The firm expects to use the money to fund around 20 companies over three years in seed and Series A rounds ranging from $500K to $3 million, and will reserve some of the funds for subsequent rounds raised by these portfolio companies. Javelin was founded by Noah Doyle and Jed Katz, both of whom have experience as entrepreneurs. Doyle founded online loyalty program MyPoints.com and was an executive at Keyhole (which was acquired by Google and became Google Earth). Katz founded Rent.net and Move.com. The firm initially got its start in May 2008, and then relaunched in April 2009 with a fund size of $75 million (it’s now raised a total of $180 million). Katz and Doyle say that they’re often asked how they differ from so-called “super angels” and explain that they can participate in later-stage rounds that angels typically can’t. But they say they’re different from typical VC firms because they’ve been entrepreneurs much of their careers and that they tend to “run at an entrepreneur’s pace” in terms of reaching decisions quickly. (Of course, many other VCs have entrepreneurial experience and will make similar claims). Katz and Doyle also say that they tend to be very involved with their companies, as opposed to just swinging by for board meetings. The first Javelin fund has had one exit so far: Scout Labs, which was by Lithium Technologies for $20-25 million last May. |
null | Mg Siegler | 2,011 | 2 | 23 | null |
With the platform burning, Nokia also talked to RIM before jumping into Redmond's arms | Steve O'Hear | 2,011 | 2 | 15 | The battle of mobile ecosystems is now a three horse race: Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, and Microsoft’s Windows Phone. Or so says Nokia CEO Stephen Elop now that the Finnish handset maker has jumped off of into . Conspicuous by their absence – in Elop’s analysis – was RIM’s BlackBerry or indeed the dark horse in the room, HP’s webOS. They are both, of course, vertical platforms (as is iOS) so you’d be forgiven for thinking that licensing either was never a consideration. However, TechCrunch Europe has learned that Nokia did indeed explore a partnership with RIM, which would have seen Nokia smartphones running BlackBerry OS. According to our well-placed sources, discussions between the two companies took place as Nokia in parallel explored the Google and Microsoft options. How far those discussions went isn’t entirely clear, although our source says that RIM wasn’t interested, but either way the fact that they took place at all is intriguing in itself. Not least because Elop has since attempted to airbrush out RIM’s place in the competitive landscape. We’ve also learned that as Nokia explored adopting Android with Google it was the “ “, as Elop has since described it, that turned out to be the deal-breaker. Specifically, Nokia wanted to replace Google Maps with its own Ovi offering, along with changes to Android’s handling of email, contacts, calendar, app-store and over-the-air software management in an effort to stop value moving entirely to Google – to which the search giant said no. Unless, that is, Nokia wanted to fork Android completely and therefore “stay behind the curve.” That was never seen as a viable option, says our source, whereas the Microsoft tie-in will see Nokia having direct input into Windows Phone’s future development roadmap and its Ovi Maps and broader location layer being integrated into the platform. It’s also worth remembering that Microsoft Bing already gets its maps from Nokia’s Navteq. That said, just as going with Google or indeed RIM would have signaled, by adopting Windows Phone, Elop has decided that Nokia should no longer be in the software game or certainly at the OS-level. Once that decision was made, says our source, it was just a matter of picking which platform to go with. Of course, the knock on effect will be a in software engineering and R&D head count as the company attempts to reduce spending on Symbian and . Our source also says that Nokia’s Windows Phone software integration will be done in the U.S., which would appear to be in-line with earlier reports of a bigger Silicon Valley presence. |
New Micro-VC Lool Launches in Israel. Can Better Mentoring Boost the Country's Returns? | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 2 | 15 | Israel has had an amazing track record of producing startups and raking in returns– better than most countries many times its size. The problem is the returns have fallen off dramatically in the last ten years as industries Israel excelled at have become mature. Meanwhile, it’s failed to generate many big consumer Web hits, aside from MyHeritage and a few others. I’ve traveled to Israel several times and met dozens of entrepreneurs, investors and startup boosters. In my experience, there are generally two kinds of Israelis: Those who blindly talk up everything Israel, going rabid if you dare point out the obvious decline in returns, and those who have a clear grasp of the country’s strengths and weaknesses and actively play to the strengths to combat the weaknesses. and are the latter. They have no illusions about the challenges to starting a big tech company in Israel, as industries have changed and globalization has shifted many VCs’ focus to bigger, sexier markets like India and China. But they still believe in their country’s entrepreneurs. TechCrunch last heard about Golan and Nissenbaum in 2007, when they their Q&A site Yedda to AOL. Now, the two are launching a new micro-VC firm called in hopes of filling a gap in the Israeli funding market, and help entrepreneurs with a good idea get a little further. Lool is Hebrew for “crib” or “hatchery” and the idea is that this will be more like an incubator, heavy on the mentoring. And Nissenbaum an Golan have the cred to mentor. Nissenbaum was the former country manager for AOL Israel, and before Yedda he co-founded and sold a company called SmarTeam. Golan has been a Web developer since the mid-1990s and is well liked in the Israeli scene. Both have been active angel investors, funding or advising 15 companies. Index’s is an adviser to the firm and calls it “Israel’s first credible micro VC.” “Increasingly this talent is looking to work with experienced entrepreneurs who have been there and done that,” Klein said. “Yaniv and Avichay have real entrepreneurial, product and general management credentials, they are very embedded in the community and they have great access to the US.” Like a lot of micro VCs in the US, the firm is focused on Internet and media and expects most of its companies will have rapid exits of less than $50 million. The firm will provide seed and series A funding and a lot of added services like discounted legal and accounting services and in-house product and user experience experts. “We’re trying to create unfair advantages for the companies in our portfolio,” Golan says. Lool will focus on helping a handful of the best companies it can find. It’s a dramatically different approach from Israel’s most famous angel investor who’s more of a Ron Conway-style investor, coming in very early and spreading his investments widely and providing less one-on-one time with each entrepreneur. As the Valley has shown, a rich startup ecosystem can support both. Anyone who reads my posts regularly knows I’m not a big fan of funds set up just to help companies flip. I don’t buy that they’re sustainable long-term in what has always been a hit driven business. But like it or not, these quick flips have become the bread and butter of Israel’s Web scene, and Internet companies are what aspiring entrepreneurs want to build, whether the country has a good track record at it or not. I applaud these guys for taking a new approach and working to make entrepreneurs more successful at the game they want to play. |
The First Crysis 2 Easter Egg Hits YouTube | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 2 | 15 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUXlCH1stNc&w=480&h=390] You have to wonder if this easter egg is just part of the leaked or is part of the final production. |
Apple's Digital Newsstand Just Disrupted The Publishing Industry | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 2 | 15 | How much pricing power exactly does Apple have over publishers desperate to figure out a digital strategy that results in paying subscribers? A hell of a lot—at least that is what Apple is with its new . Apple is taking a 30 percent cut of all digital subscription revenues. Just take a moment to think about that for a second. Up until now, Apple took a 30 percent cut of one-time purchases in iTunes. So the 30 percent number doesn’t seem strange, at least not to consumers. What do we care how the money is split up as long as we all of these digital goodies are affordable? But publishers and other media companies with subscription businesses (cough, Netflix, cough) care very much. Apple is saying if we deliver a paying customer, we will take 30 percent of their subscription dollars in perpetuity as long as they consume your media on our devices. You could argue that iTunes is the new digital newsstand, and so it deserves a cut. True, it does deserve something, but let’s compare what Apple wants to take with what a real newsstand collects. Typically, magazine companies take as much as 75 percent of the cover price of a magazine sold at a newsstand, which shows who has the pricing power in that relationship. But that is on a per-issue basis. The newsstands are merely lead generators which get people to sample magazines and newspapers before a portion of those people convert to paying subscribers. The newsstands don’t get anything extra for helping to bring in a new subscriber, forget about an ongoing cut of the subscription fee. Of course there are services that deliver subscribers to publishers, but even they don’t get an ongoing cut of the subscription. It’s more of a lead-gen type deal. Apple is now telling media companies to forget about the way they’ve been doing business for decades. There are new rules in its digital newsstand. And, while some big publishers like might try to hold the line or , in the end if consumers decide they want to read digital magazines on their iPads, they may have no choice but to do what Steve tells them to do. And that could kill their business. Not only would they be handing over a substantial portion of their revenues to Apple, but they get virtually no data in return—data about customers. It’s that credit card data they use to do their consumer marketing and sell those readers to advertisers. So yeah, there’s going to be lots of resistance to Apple’s subscription scheme. No wonder the are already out. In the end, the old guard will fight it as long s they can, while new entrants with nothing to lose will build readerships on the iPad. It’s probably never been a better time to start a digital magazine. : An earlier version of this post reported that magazine publishers collect 95 percent of newsstand sales, which came from a source at a magazine publisher. After this figure was questioned in comments, I went back to my source who admitted he was wrong and suggested that for a large publisher with clout 70 to 75 percent was a better figure. Some commenters say it is closer to 50 percent, which may be true for smaller publishers. Nevertheless, these only apply to single issue sales—the equivalent of a paid download in the App Store—not ongoing subscription fees. |
Twitter Is Having A Bad Day: Bizarre "Blank Page" Is The New "Fail Whale" | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 15 | Notice that everything’s seemed kind of unusually quiet in the blogosphere all day ? From to the emergence of the new blank screen ( error, it seems to me at least like the sundry unspecified Twitter issues on the loose this morning and afternoon are actually CAUSING a slow news day. While the delay on the tweets was thankfully a short while ago, users are still reporting the blank page error. The problems are affecting both the website and clients. Some 3rd party client users are also noticing interesting tweet crawling errors and the clients crashing altogether, like this random cluster of tweets at the bottom of a Tweetdeck search for tweets from performed by . It’s unclear if all the problems are related. While Twitter says it’s working on fixing the issues and that the blank screen has only appeared for a small number of users but wouldn’t comment on any specific cause. It seems like, at least from the timing of complaints, that the situation is ongoing. I’m seeing reports coming from outlets as diverse and mainstream as and that something’s rotten in the state of Twitter. In fact I just got the screen image above while searching for tweets to include in this post. It’s not just you. Users are also pointing out that the link is now dead and redirecting . Could these issues be preliminary signals of an impending move entirely over to New Twitter? http://twitter.com/#!/davewiner/status/37416629423833088 http://twitter.com/#!/danstar88/statuses/37648043830546432 http://twitter.com/#!/paidContent/status/37378211063144448 http://twitter.com/#!/ricmacnz/status/37643098364456960 |
Search Still Sucks | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 2 | 12 | A decade ago I tried Google for the first time. Like everyone said, it was magic – the result I wanted was right there at the top. For someone who’d been using AltaVista for years before that it was a very pleasant experience. Anyone who was on the Internet before Google came along knows exactly what I’m talking about. Google just felt right. It got the job done. It’s been a creeping feeling, growing over the years, but it sort of feels like pre-Google again. Search is a really bad overall experience. Travel searches, for example, are a joke, and are popping up to try to fix that. When I’m trying to figure out the best hotel for me when I travel I bail on Google entirely and head to Tripadvisor (shudder), and Gogobot. Same for gadget product reviews. GDGT, Amazon and occasionally Consumer Reports seem to have the best collections of data, so I just go there directly and bypass Google. In fact, I use Google mostly for navigation, not discovery these days. Meaning I know the document I’m trying to find and figure out the best search query to locate it. But pure discovery? It’s a shit show of layer upon layer of SEO madness vying for my click. Is there actual evidence of Google failing at search? Probably somewhere, but certainly not in the search share numbers. They maintain a healthy, almost monopolistic, lead in search despite huge efforts by Microsoft to compete. But then again, AltaVista had huge search share too, right before they suddenly didn’t any more. And while I watch search startups like make serious attempts to fix search by thinking about the problem a little differently, it’s just too early to know if they’ll succeed. So what is the evidence that search still sucks? Well, you know it’s true, just like me. And the fact that the mighty Google is suddenly taking every opportunity to toot their own search horn shows they know it, too. They for stealing data with just a little too much vehemence. In the end it felt like less of a gotcha moment, and more like entrapment. And then today, with this JC Penney nonsense. For months the company gamed Google to get the top result in dozens of lucrative product searches. Google recently discovered it and shut it down. And then, as best I can tell, fed the story to the as a sort of victory lap. I say it should be an embarrassing moment for Google, not one to celebrate. In fact I did say it, . Google’s by lightly trashing Bing: Which is fine. It’s always fun to slap Bing around a little, I guess. , who used to fight spam at Google, weighed in as well, saying Earlier today she also the JC Penney story. When companies start to flail they nearly always do a couple of things. First, they trash the competitors. Then they talk about how hard the problem is and that the solution is a long term one. Altavista did a lot of that in the late nineties. Right before a competitor came in and fixed the AltaVista problem permanently. Yes, search is very hard. But Silicon Valley is really good at doing hard things. The real problem right now is that there’s a perception that Google is untouchable in search. When a venture capitalist sees a pitch from a new search startup all they can think about is the . And since venture capitalists are just about the most risk averse people in Silicon Valley, the funds just don’t flow. But all the evidence suggests otherwise. Demand Media is worth $1.6 billion, and their entire business is based on pushing cheap, useless content into Google to get a few stray links. If Google was good at search, Demand Media wouldn’t exist. And Bing wouldn’t be making solid gains in search market share. And JC Penney wouldn’t be able to massively game search results for a few months, during the holiday season, without getting caught until months later. We need to see a real competitor emerge in search. If only because it will make Google up its game, and make all of us a lot happier. |
Palm's Ari Jaaksi (Who Previously Lead MeeGo At Nokia) On Nokia Ditching MeeGo | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 2 | 12 | I was on a plane somewhere over Quebec when the went down. For those who missed it: Nokia has partnered with Microsoft to make Windows Phone 7 their smartphone platform of choice, effectively killing off Nokia’s involvement with both the Symbian and MeeGo platforms. In a , Ari Jaaksi — the man who lead the MeeGo project at Nokia until he left for Palm in October of last year — touched in on the matter: On another note, I worry about my old friends a lot. I’m sad to see they no longer trust they can make a difference. They’ve given up and given away their passion. Sorry, that ain’t gonna work. You must believe in yourself and what you are up to, and you must believe you can change the world. That’s the only way I know. All the best, though. Yikes. |
Google Explains, Apologizes For, CR-48 Spam | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 2 | 12 | people who have received a notebook, and people who’ve requested one, got hit with 100 or more emails from a newly created Google Group. Google sent out an email this evening apologizing for the emails and explaining what happened. Google was planning on launching the group next week for all users who have been selected to be in the program. But someone discovered it early and posted to it. Says the email: The full email is below. The best part, in my opinion, are the step by step directions on how to delete the emails (select all, hit delete, etc.). From: Chrome Notebook Team
Date: Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 6:21 PM
Subject: Apologies and an update on the Chrome Notebook Pilot User Forum Earlier this morning, you may have received a large number of emails from chrome-notebook-pilot-users@googlegroups.com regarding the Chrome notebook Pilot program user forum. We apologize for this inconvenience, and you will not receive any more messages from this address. Instructions for deleting these messages are at the end of this email. What happened? We planned to launch our Chrome Notebook Pilot forum next week to all users who had been selected for the Pilot program. Last night, around midnight Pacific time, a user discovered this forum and posted a message. Unfortunately, we had misconfigured this forum to email every post to every member. Thus, the first post started an avalanche of responses. Some messages were unsubscribe requests, others were thoughtful comments or questions, but all of them were emailed to every user. We have since deleted this group. We’ve created a brand new user forum, which you can sign up for here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/chrome-notebook-pilot Rest assured: you will not be added to this forum unless you sign up using the link above. The goal of the forum is to provide a centralized place for Pilot users to share their Chrome notebook experiences and tips. In addition, with a centralized forum, our team can more effectively respond to your questions and feedback. If you are receiving this email and have not yet received a Cr-48, you should be hearing from us soon. Again, our apologies for the flood of emails, and we hope you will join us at the new forum. Chrome Notebook Team —-
How to delete previous messages: Gmail
1. In the Gmail search box, type “from:chrome-notebook-pilot-users” and press Enter.
2. Click the checkbox to the left of the Archive button to Select All.
3. At the top of the search results, click the link that says “Select all XX conversations in Search results.”
4. Click the Delete button. You should not receive any more messages from this address. Other email programs
1. Use the search function in your email program to find messages with the sender chrome-notebook-pilot-users@googlegroups.com.
2. Select all the messages in the search results.
3. Delete the messages. You should not receive any more messages from this address. |
Surprise! LG Announces The Optimus 3D | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 2 | 12 | Guys! Guys! ( )! Guess what? LG… is working on a phone.. called the Optimus 3D. SHAZAM! I mean, I know this thing sort of leaked … and … and then LG … and … and then LG straight up said they’d announce this phone at Mobile World Congress, thereby making it pretty much official. But uh.. now it’s official- .
That’s all LG’s shared so far on the spec front, but a full spec sheet should trickle down before too long. We’ll update this post once it does. In the mean time, go try to think of a billion dollar idea that makes use of glasses-free 3D screen tech — it’s sure to be a trend over the next year or so. Oh, and “OMG 3D PORN!!” doesn’t count. |
Intel kept in the dark over Nokia’s MeeGo plans; operators reject first device | Steve O'Hear | 2,011 | 2 | 12 | Prior to the public announcement on Friday, Intel was kept in the dark with regards to Nokia’s plans to to a glorified R&D project, sources with knowledge of the situation tell TechCrunch Europe. The U.S. chip maker, it appears, was caught off guard as were many media outlets and analysts – aside – with the news that Nokia has forged with Microsoft that will see the handset maker adopt Windows Phone as its primary smartphone platform. Intel, which along with Nokia is , is said to be extremely concerned now that Nokia will inevitably reduce its engineering commitment, which it desperately needs, and where this leaves plans to get its Atom chip into smartphones and other mobile devices. We’ve also learned that Nokia’s first MeeGo device, originally scheduled to be announced late last year, has been sent back to the drawing board by operators. The problem, says our source, is in relation to the “flimsy” hardware keyboard mechanism, which fell short of operator standards. This is surprising as it’s thought to share a similar hinge to the N97 and E7, both of which were accepted by carriers, although it could be that MeeGo requires a larger CPU and battery compared to Symbian and therefore leaves less room in the chassis. As a result, the first MeeGo smartphone, thought to be the N9-00, . Instead, a second (and possibly last) MeeGo smartphone on the roadmap – the N9-01 – sans physical keyboard will be pushed out first, as earlier by Engadget. Interestingly, well-placed sources also tell us that the device won’t feature the stock MeeGo UI but instead one designed by “a three person external team rather than any of Nokia’s hundreds of internal designers.” It could be announced as early as tomorrow at Mobile World Congress. While not creating quite the same fanfare as Nokia’s newly forged partnership with Microsoft, the tie-in with Intel to co-develop MeeGo was seen by the industry as a pretty big deal. It was hoped that the open-source OS would put Nokia back into a leadership position in the smartphone space as Symbian inevitably trickled down to lower-cost, mass-market devices, while in turn and somewhat ironically it would give Intel the heavyweight partner it needed to “catalyse” MeeGo’s ecosystem. It also added immediate credibility to the chip maker’s aim to put “Intel inside” smartphones, tablets and other types of converged devices. Twelve months later, however, and it’s abundantly clear that Nokia is choosing to “catalyse” Microsoft’s Windows Phone ecosystem instead. |
We're Live In Barcelona For Mobile World Congress 2011! | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 2 | 12 | We’ve made it. 16 hours, 7,000 miles, and later, we’ve made it. We’ve trekked halfway around the world to Barcelona to bring you the latest and greatest from the biggest mobile show in Europe: Mobile World Congress. While the conference officially starts on February 14th, a few folks always like to get the party started a bit early. Samsung, Sony Ericcson, and Nokia all have press conferences scheduled at 6 PM CET (That’s 9 AM Pacific for all the folks back home) on the 13th — and unless any more of our gear decides to spontaneously combust, we’ll have live blogs of both Samsung and Sony Ericcson’s announcements going down as they happen. We’re expecting a pretty good show this year. Stay tuned in for all the news! |
It looks like Tweetdeck just sold for $30m – so what does the founder have to say? | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 2 | 12 | While TechCrunch has a rumour that UberMedia has just acquired , the company itself is staying tight-lipped. CEO Iain Dodsworth told me today “We’re not going to comment on acquisition rumours.” Heck, that’s his prerogative. That being said, we have very good sources that told us today that the deal was for $30 million, UberMedia’s largest deal yet. Bill Gross’ company, after buying EchoFon, another popular Twitter client, now controls 20% of the userbase of Twitter. TweetDeck had raised a little over $5 million in funding. But it started from humble roots. My first interview with TweetDeck’s Dodsworth was at TechCrunch 50 in 2008 in the form of a podcast I laughingly called ( ). At the time Dodsworth explained how Tweetdeck had largely started out as a hobby project. But it was clear that many, many Twitter users loved his interface onto Twitter. Suddenly you could filter people you followed into manageable groups. It was a God-send for journalists like me wanting to track the market. I even used it to break stories. Not long after, in January 2009, Tweetdeck from . Tweetdeck was now on a roll. Even Mark Zuckerberg admitted to that March. An iPhone app , and the desktop air app just and . A Chrome app and further improvement confirmed it as the most powerful Twitter client out there. Personally I thught it would last longer as an independent, having recently launched it’s product, which felt like a push into the Tumblr space. But hey, I guess you have to know when to hold them and fold them. Last word from Dodsworth? He had no further comment, but he did say “The timing of is perfect…” Read that how you will. But it looks like he will reveal all there… |
Mentos: The Science Maker! | John Biggs | 2,011 | 2 | 12 | There is no better feeling on earth than placing a Mentos in a bottle of Diet Coke. The spray, the surge, the feeling of power: it’s very heaven. But what if you want to make special geysers of foam shaped like mushroom clouds? What then? Well you go and get this $25 Mentos/Coke kit from EepyBird. The kit includes Mentos, a set of PVC nozzles, and lab glasses. Coke is not included, but you should be able to supply that yourself. The nozzles are cut in different shapes for extra fun including “thin,” “crossed,” and “tiny pinprick hole that will probably make the Coke hurt as it sprays out at your face.” Fun for the whole family, to be sure. The kit is available now from Make. |
null | John Biggs | 2,011 | 2 | 15 | null |
Lissn Strips Down To Its Skivvies: Three Anonymous People Chat While Others Listen | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 2 | 12 | When launched on stage at TechCrunch50 in September 2009, we described it as sort of a “ “. Well, like the latter, the idea behind Lissn never really caught on. By March of last year, the service decided to pivot a bit to be rather than specific conversations. But that didn’t really work either. So now, with version 3, they’ve decided to strip away basically everything. Founder says that they started removing features after hearing author talk about creating a “minimum viable product”. He determined that Lissn, at its core, was simply about conversations, not the people having them or the topics they’re about. So here we have the new Lissn, which is sort of like a Chatroulette for conversations now. If that sounds familiar, it’s a bit like what offers. And Armstrong isn’t shying away from that comparison. But he thinks it’s slightly more than that — he thinks it’s more like Twitter meets Omegle now. Essentially, Lissn now allows for three people to chat while any number of people can listen. The key is that all three people are anonymous except for two things: their location is shown (at the state level) and the site that they came from is shown (Twitter.com, for example). Eventually, the plan is to add other features as well. Armstrong calls three the “magic number” for these type of conversations based on what he observed through Lissn up until now. So will Lissn work this time around? The once red-hot Chatroulette angle cooled off almost as quickly. But some might say that was at least in part due to the exposed male genitalia aspect. At the very least, random anonymous conversations should lead to some really awkward ones. And it couldn’t be easier to start with Lissn now, as you don’t have to sign up at all. You just go there and start chatting. [vimeo http://vimeo.com/19542978 w=620] |
Wenger Nomad LED Compass Watch Hands-On | Contributor | 2,011 | 2 | 12 | null |
Gillmor Gang 2.12.11 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 2 | 12 | The difference was real time, as embodied by Twitter and Facebook and the rubric social media. The way it was handled, as part of the story Williams intoned as he announced Mubarek’s resignation, came close to rolling up the Twitter trigger as a central element of the event. Yet as with the birth of Twitter, the rush of FriendFeed to real time, and the occupation of computing by the iPad, we almost don’t see the completeness with which social mobile has only just begun to flex its muscles. On the Gillmor Gang, I recalled that moment when Gabe Rivera suggested I log into Twitter. Then came the year where I posted nothing, followed by the gaming of Track, the FailWhale, and a lot of noise about how social media and the enterprise didn’t have a thing in common. Of course, they were wrong, and Marc Benioff proved us right. Chatter.com was announced at the Super Bowl, and now millions are slowly moving down the runway toward takeoff. Chatter rolled out @mentions and Likes this Sunday, and we heard the same old noises about applying social signals to business processes. Fellow Gangster John Taschek and I have been experimenting with @mentions for some time now on Twitter. Together with direct messages, the two signals have provided a key tool for communicating what we want publicly, and what we want to keep private. Email can kiss its lack of the @sign goodbye. And along with it, the malignant hierarchical constraints that choke serendipity and calcify progress. Email creates the fame monster of who’s in charge, who’s starting the conversation, who’s managing the flow. In a stream architecture, relevance and authority are earned by the subtle observation of cloud dynamics. Not just what you say but what you don’t. Not just when you contribute but when you ratify by laying out. Not just what you earn with each comment, but what you put away for a rainy day through an accumulation of signal, rhythm, silence, humor. Email is a fire drill. Here’s what we’re talking about, when we’re expecting it, why you’re going to do it. The answers are turned into commitments, performance criteria, weights and balances in calculating your value to the enterprise. But the tools of such arbitrage are to:, cc:, and blindcc:. This message is for you, and fyi for them. And secretly fyi but just listen, don’t jump in. The bcc: carries with it an implicit agreement that the very fact of the bcc: is not to be shared. Tweets, @mentions, and DMs can handle most of those email patterns, but add an additional layer of signal to the conversation. A tweet or retweet tells not only what you should learn but who are the presumed listeners. A retweet is essentially an @mention without the overt cc: signal, providing velocity to a stream of ideas, alerts, or items. @mentions add the element of shared experience, the water cooler opportunity, not just for the current item but for future and even past examination. The direct message feels like an email to: with its tunnel from you to them, but it also carries an affinity with its realtime insertion into the push notification stream. Because it shares that alert visibility with @mentions, it unifies the citations that frequent both types into a stream of notifications rich with context and timeliness. But it makes no demands on you to continue the form of the originating message. Often I will respect the privacy of a direct message in thinking about who to pass it along to, but stripped of the commentary to the core citation the message can be shared in open or additional direct channels. Thinking across the public/private axis produces a layer of abstraction about the metadata surrounding the citation and the cloud to which the citation itself can be pushed. Gabe Rivera was reticent to discuss his mix of signals and how they are orchestrated to produce Techmeme, but in general his recent experiments with adding social signals not just as indicators of authority but also as content themselves speak to this same abstraction of the elements of the broader conversation. By whitelisting authoritative nodes, he is adding cloud dynamics to the area between blog posts and micromessages in a way similar to what @mentions and dms do to the area between public and private domains. It’s a blend of institutional memory and actionable discovery that proves both valuable and highly authoritative when switched on. With these tools, we can now reinvent work, politics, the notion of expertise, and what constitutes leadership skills. In my own work, the velocity of @mentions and streaming video feeds back on itself to accelerate the progress we can make, which then provides fodder for the streams we produce externally as well as internally. It’s much like a self-fulfilling prophecy, where the act of imagining leads to the economy of citation and the velocity of humor to reach the target and the beginning of the cycle simultaneously. The message of Will.i.am’s Chatter.com films at halftime was one of transformation, of imagining the world as we intuit it could be, of discovering rather than preaching. If we’re wondering what Chatter.com is supposed to be, that’s because we intuit what that is going to be. As I reminded Gabe, I had no idea what Twitter was good for, but what it could become? I had a feeling, that’s for sure. I’ve still got that feeling. @mention me and do two things: tell me what you think, and give a clue to what you’ll think next. It sounds simplistic, like Scoble publishing his phone number on his blog. But @mentions require just enough work to over time filter the stream to those most invested in the dynamics of the particular cloud. The signals derived from association, of the cumulative nature of @mentions, the dynamics of the conversation, the two-way assent of direct messages. When I want to bring Kevin Marks into the conversation on the Gang, I bait him with some aspersions about the emptiness of the open model, and boom, he’s there. It’s an @kevinmarks informed by the cumulative stream, and those who seek to game it or inflict insult will eventually tire of the sport. Remember when we got the Twitter religion, when Friendfeed went real time in a big way, when Jobs sat on the couch with the iPad. In the age of too much of nothing, as Bob Dylan wrote, our brains are choking on the stuff in the middle. Short term, we got it covered pretty much: gotta take out the recycling, check Techmeme, oh look, Mubarek quit after all, answer email, rinse, repeat. Long term, somehow we have plenty of room for all those years ago, for the big thoughts, the petty grudges, the songs that carried our dreams along. But middle term, we’re screwed. The kids will say it’s age, old man, but I see it everywhere: the hunt for the right word, the blank look about something that happened last week or the grunt of frustration at remembering too late what I forgot to do. It’s the memory that slips quietly from short to not long enough ago. Soon we’ll master the multitasking of push notification, harness the now, corral the middle into a shared memory where we get reinforcement about the value of savoring our success with change. You could see it in the eyes of the Egyptians, in the chorus of their yearning. They just used this moment of social media to stand as a group and through the force of their cloud bring about change. They know better than us how difficult the road ahead is, but they know that turning away is worse. ‘Don’t you know that you can count me out… in.’ @gaberivera @scobleizer @kevinmarks @jtaschek @stevegillmor |
10 Reasons To Buy A Tablet (And 5 Reasons Not To) | John Biggs | 2,011 | 2 | 12 | You’ve held out for months, waiting and watching the market for some sign of a tablet that you think you’d like. But maybe you’re asking the wrong question. Instead of “Which tablet should I buy?” maybe you should be asking why you need a tablet in the first place? We’ve written out a brief guide to deciding whether you need a tablet at all. As for a recommendation, the two devices we can unequivocally recommend right now are the and, if you’re into , the (although there is some talk of an ). However, don’t buy right now. The iPad 2 is on its way and the , , and , are coming soon as well. So before you break out the credit card, let’s talk about a few reasons to buy a tablet… and a few reasons not to. |
(Founder Stories) Fred Wilson Explains Why He Wouldn't Invest In Groupon Or Pandora | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 2 | 12 | Few VCs have a hotter hand right now than His firm, Union Square Ventures, is an investor in Twitter, Zynga, Foursquare, Tumblr, Etsy, Clickable, and . In this episode of , he talks to host Chris Dixon about Union Square’s investment thesis has changed from going after all web apps to companies that are “building a large networks of engaged users.” (Watch the video above). It has to be be both a large network and engaged users. By that requirement, he says he wouldn’t invest in Pandora (which just f yesterday, although this was taped a couple weeks ago) because Pandora listeners just sit back. The users aren’t doing anything in Pandora,” he says, “even though Pandora is a great company.” Similarly, he wouldn’t invest in Groupon. Not because he thinks it’s a bad business, it’s just not his area of focus. “Groupon is an ad network,” he says, “we wouldn’t invest in that.” Within ecommerce, he feels that marketplaces (like Etsy) do fall under his definition, but things like Diapers.com or Zappos would not. Wilson also mentions some companies that got away which he wishes he had invested in: and , which he lost to Sequoia. Dixon and Wilson also talk about the relationship between founders and VCs, and the importance of injecting capital when a company needs to scale, as happened with Twitter and Tumblr. Dixon recalls a study that showed the farther way the VC is from a company, the better it does. Wilson agreed, citing as proof Twitter and Zynga, which are both in California, while Union Square is based in New York (as an early investor in both, this gave the two companies about a year of minimum meddling). In the video segment below, Wilson and Dixon dive into the mechanics of the VC business, and talk about Union Square’s new , the “cancerous management fees” VC firms charge their investors, and why it might be a good thing to let startup founders take money off the table before an IPO or sale. “It allows them to take more risks,” argues Wilson, “because not everything is riding on the company.” If you want to hear more of this conversation, check out Part I where Wilson and Dixon talk about today’s |
Snapdragon Bites Back: Qualcomm Announces A Quad-Core 2.5Ghz Chipset For Mobile Devices | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 2 | 13 | I’ve been writing about the mobile industry for a few years now, and there’s one thing that still blows my mind each and every day: the rate at which these companies are able to make new feel old. Everytime something comes along and rocks our world, someone else in the industry responds with “Oh yeah? Well our new thing is twice as fast! And twice as efficient! Oh, and ours is completely powered by the ! Beat that!” And then someone does. Just 3 weeks ago, a document leaked out NVIDIA detailing the Tegra 3, a 1.5 GHz, Quad-Core chipset for smart phones and tablets. , right? Texas Instruments responded with their own quad-core chipset — except clocked in at Ghz. Now it’s Qualcomm’s turn. Their rebuttal? 4 cores, each running at a theoretical maximum of Punch it, Chewie! Later this morning at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Qualcomm will be announcing the next-generation of their Snapdragon chipset line. Based on a brand spankin’ new micro-architecture that Qualcomm calls “Krait” (which, we’ve learned from , is the name of a genus of snakes from India whose bite will straight wreck your day), the new APQ8064 chipset is faster, runs cooler, and gobbles up less battery than any Snapdragon before it. But of course, there’s a catch: as chipset manufacturers tend to do, Qualcomm’s talking this thing up long before it’s actually available. Samples of this chipset won’t even start reaching manufacturers until early , so expect it to be a pretty long while before we actually see this new chipset sneak into any devices. By that point, I’m sure we’ll be getting all worked up over a deca-core 10GHz processor that ManufacturerX will be promising to install in our heads by 2015. |
App Visually Filters Pages You've "Liked" On Facebook: Why Isn't This A Facebook Feature? | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 13 | The meaning of a Facebook Like has been getting more and more vague ever since Facebook the wording from “Become a fan” to “Like” on Facebook Fan Pages. What’s even more frustrating than this is that there’s no simple way, aside from visiting the “Activities,” “Interests” and “Other Pages” part of your Facebook profile, to figure out what Pages you have liked in the past. And there’s no way to do it in an visually appealing manner. In essence: It’s complicated. As many Pages employ tactics in order to people to like stuff (in order to access content for example), it’s about time users had a simple interface to view and manage what they’ve Liked, especially as the new Facebook “Sponsored Story” features from your Likes in order to show ads to your friends. As rough and scrappy as it is, the Facebook app shows you the Pages you’ve Liked including their logos, lets you sort by them category and allows you to remove Pages you’d like to un-Like (Note: webpages that use Open Graph tags may show up as Likes, because Facebook holds them equivalent to Pages). I have no idea why Facebook has yet to build something like this, especially as Like button use becomes a more and more predominant of brand engagement. And while I wish the MyLikesBox tracking was more comprehensive than just Facebook Pages, i.e. it showed me every article and status update and person I have ever liked, Pages is a at least a start, for now. Proof: Through the use of , I have un-Liked at least two pages I hadn’t really meant to Like. You can try out the app Although the app seems to be working fine for me (I have a relatively small number of Likes), some of you are reporting Like inaccuracies as well as possible security issues. If you want to manually manage your Likes without installing MyLikesBox you can go to Activities > Interests > Other Pages and delete them from there. |
Sortfix tries a different approach to improving search – suggesting better search terms | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 2 | 13 | It’s interesting that TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington about the current problems with search. Because it’s clear that while few players feel able to take on the might of Google, there remaina a few startups out there trying to attack the problem from different angles. One of them is Israeli startup , who I met on a recent trip to Tel Aviv in Israel (more on that soon). Previously, SortFix tried concentrating its search functionality directly through its website and through its . But now SortFix has created a FireFox extension for Google which makes use of SortFix’s algorithms to generate suggested words to improve your search. It’s still in beta . The effect is like having a smarter person sitting over your shoulder saying “hey, if you add this extra word to the search terms you may get what you want”. Small plus and minus buttons (when hovered over with the mouse) help you tweak the terms. The FireFox extension also has a feature their site or iPad app doesn’t have – such as the ability to specifically exclude suggested words from a search query – this is something a simple Google search actually can’t do. These suggestions can be added in or taken away to improve the results. But SortFix isn’t playing around with Google’s results. Instead it is giving the user more control over deciding which ‘power words’ are relevant and whether to use them or not. The extension also works with Google Instant as well as Google News, Videos, Books, Blogs, Realtime and e-commerce. IE and Chrome versions are coming soon and there are also plans to expand the add-on to work with Bing and Amazon. SortFix was co-founded in March 2009 by CEO Amir Lavi and CTO Yohay Barsky – who may well be sitting on a neat idea which search engines would do well to take note of. |
Xperia Play Available In The U.S. In March On Verizon | Jay Donovan | 2,011 | 2 | 13 | The big announcement coming out of the Sony Ericsson press conference tonight – the evening before the opening of the Mobile World Congress here in Barcelona, Spain – is that their new Xperia Play “gaming device” will ship in the U.S.A. this March and will ride on Verizon’s network. That’s what everyone was interested in and the crowded demo booths were a testament to its popularity (video coming soon, check back). However Sony Ericsson also revealed that their new strategy is to provide multiple devices for multiple lifestyles and all on the Android Gingerbread platform. This new family of devices focus on melding communication with entertainment within different consumer lifestyle segments. It seems to break down to the ARC and the Neo, being different flavors of premium android goodness, especially with a focus on video, while the Pro focuses on Messaging and the Play is obviously for gaming.
Plus further partnerships with Sony for a soon-to-be-launched PlayStation App Store experience, hint at where the future of Sony’s gaming console is headed. |
Steve Jobs On The Apple Campus Is Like A Double Rainbow | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 2 | 13 | On Friday the published an article entitled which depicted the Apple CEO as still having a generous hand in the day to day going ons of the company despite being on medical leave. Jobs involvement comes as no surprise, as Jobs himself the statement announcing his absence, Along with proof that Jobs has kept his word, the has somehow tapped into the of people familiar with Apple this week, publishing on multiple product developments, from the existence of a cheaper iPhone nano, to the possibility of MobileMe being available for free as well as the chance it might be turned into cloud-based storage for iTunes media. The also that Steve Jobs has returned to campus specifically to focus on these and other upcoming projects, including the As speculation as to what the reported Jobs appearances may mean nears fever pitch, we have confirmed that he indeed has been making the rounds, and that he isn’t on campus for any one reason according to a source. In any case, the sight of Jobs returning to work instills hope at both Cupertino and beyond. On Friday, the same day as the story, I received the following email from an Apple employee, with their take on what their former CEO’s reappearance may mean. The email was so eloquent and timeless it bears republishing in full, below. ————————————————————————————– —Apple Think Different ad campaign When Steve Jobs returned to Apple as Interim CEO, he worked with Chiat Day to create an ad campaign to answer: “Who is Apple, and what is it we stand for? Where do fit in this world?” The Think Different campaign featured Jobs’s personal heroes: Einstein, Gandhi, Picasso, and others. Yet looking at the campaign today, it feels like it applies as much to Steve Jobs himself as it does to the people he featured. For that reason, when Steve Jobs sent an email on January 17 of this year to Apple employees announcing that he was taking an indefinite medical leave of absence, there was a sadness that, perhaps, the tech community had limited time to spend with someone who, like him or hate him, was While the financial markets didn’t reflect a sense of panic or sorrow (Apple’s stock price is higher today than when the news was announced on January 17) many people in Silicon Valley felt that the indefinite leave implied that Steve Jobs was moving out of day to day work and essentially retiring from Apple, never to return. It was, therefore, a bit of a surprise when reports began surfacing that Steve Jobs was spotted back on Apple’s campus only 2 weeks after his announcement. The Wall Street Journal ran a story on February 11 that not only was Steve Jobs he had also Reports have surfaced on other websites that Steve Jobs has in fact been on campus frequently, meeting with executives and having his lunch meetings in the cafeteria with SVP of Industrial Design Jonathan Ive. For many who have seen Steve Jobs at Apple recently, this is a “double rainbow” moment: a mixture of awe, excitement, and confusion. Financially, these reports will likely do little to move Apple’s stock price, just as the original announcement had a muted response. But this isn’t about stock price. It’s also not about computers, phones, operating systems, App stores, or televisions. It’s about community. And knowing that someone that has been a part of that community for decades is still there: browsing lunch options in the cafeteria, walking around with his coworkers and doing his best to contribute something meaningful. Steve Jobs said in his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address. It feels appropriate to take a moment now to reflect on those words, our community, and our time here. ————————————————————————————– [A link to this video was included at the bottom of the note.] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmG9jzCHtSQ&w=630] The mobile market has had an unusually exciting past couple of weeks, with news of the Nokia and Microsoft partnership and HP launching a suite of devices based around its newly acquired webOs making headlines. But bold moves by competitors haven’t shaken the market’s faith in Apple, as our tipster and the point out, Apple stock has risen 2.4% to $356.85 a share since Jobs announced his leave and COO Tim Cook took over on January 17th. As my colleague MG Siegler , this market optimism is parallel to what happened during Jobs’ six month leave in 2009. After an initial hit, Apple’s stock price due to a series of product updates including iPhone OS 3, the iPhone 3GS and OS X Snow Leopard. If we can glean anything from the stream of media reports in the past couple of days, history is at least trying to repeat itself. Alluding to a popular Internet meme where a man extreme amounts of emotion over the sighting of a double rainbow, our Apple tipster refers to a Jobs appearance as “double rainbow” moment: And whether we’re reading about it in an article or seeing Jobs himself unexpectedly lunching in the cafeteria, we’re all still left asking “What does it mean?” Watch our own version of an Apple or read more about Apple’s 2011 product vision
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Spanish Design Student Creates Sleek New Spotify Gadget | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 2 | 13 | Leave it to those ambitious, young grad students to show us the objects of our desire that we didn’t even realize we desired. Thanks to , an Interaction Design student at the Umeå Institute of Design in Sweden, we now have a futuristic new music player that lets you listen to from the comfort of your living room. (Only if your living room is in Europe, however, as Spotify is not yet available in the U.S.) At first glance, the player — which Parra made as part of his final design project in collaboration with Spotify — looks like a digital lovechild of Jonathan Ive and the brilliant Swedes at Ikea. Perhaps the coolest feature of the product’s design is its inclusion of 192 LED nodes, which display volume levels, battery life, and Internet connectivity on the device’s face. Not too shabby for a degree project! How does this bad boy work? The player uses radio frequency identification (or RFID) technology: place one of the , which links to your playlists, onto the magnetized volume knob, and voila! As soon as the tag sticks to the knob, the antenna/Arduino in the player reads the tag and plays your hot jams. You stop those hot jams by simply removing the tag. Kinda cool, right? In the case of Parra’s reader, the responder senses the RFID tag and identifies its unique ID. Once it does, it starts playing the music that you previously linked to that specific tag. (Pictures of Parra’s Arduino and the player’s insides if you have no idea what the hell I’m talking about.) How you go about linking your playlists on the RFID tags is a little equivocal, but it sounds like this is done by connecting the player to a computer via USB. The device is programmed to know what tags shipped with the box, and the user can assign a playlist, album or a Spotify search to each of the different color-coded tags. The player is sold with a unique serial number that will essentially register your device with Parra, though “register” may be a strong word in this case. The serial number allows Parra (and perhaps his future company) to track the player and its corresponding tags. Obviously, as you may have guessed, RFID technology has the potential for myriad security and privacy issues. ( that is essentially Philip K. Dick’s conjecture on RFID technology.) So, this will require some sensitivity on Parra’s part should the player end up being sold at market by Spotify. Update: Parra ensured me that the tags are read-only (just the way he bought them from Sparkfun) and don’t actually contain any private data. Phew. Though the inner workings of the device works may sound a bit complex at first glance, the UI is sleek and simple. Use the two small buttons in the lower left corner of the speaker (as seen in the above image) to skip to the previous and next tracks in your queue. The adjacent magnetized knob holds your tags and controls volume. The slick packaging that would ship with the player will include 8 RFID tags (which incidentally look suspiciously like ), a USB cable, and a stand for the tags. It seems that, thanks to collective consciousness (or the relative novelty of applying RFID tech to music players), a few other designers and firms have been developing their own RFID devices. You can check out IDEO’s retro (whoa! Cassettes! Turntables!) player . Or this guy’s . You can also check out for a stroll through the product’s development. [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/17561267 w=640&h=427] |
Nokia's Elop keeps pumping Meego and Symbian – but what developer will now bother creating those apps? | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 2 | 13 | Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has been on stage tonight at a Mobile World Congress press conference talking about Nokia’s future relationship with Microsoft. Various blogs have been live blogging (here’s a from Engadget). But sitting back and listening to Elop’s explanation about how Symbian devices will still be shipped and a Meego device, due to ship this year, will be used for experimentation and “disruption”, one has to ask the simple question: Where are the apps? While the first MeeGo product will ship this year with a Qt framework, Qt is unlikely to go onto Nokia’s Windows Phone, thus killing off all those developers who studied Qt. “If we encourage a fork in Windows Phone’s development platform, we could create a situation where we confuse developers and consumers,” said Elop tonight in Barcelona. Bang goes that talent base, then. So the Nokia content environment will be within the Windows Phone Marketplace. Microsoft brings that, while Nokia brings the carrier billing relationships around the world. Whoop! But again – where are the apps? Where is the eco-system? The simple answer is it’s now a Windows Phone eco-system. While admittedly the Symbian apps eco-system deserved to be killed off, the Meego eco-system had not even started. And Nokia still wants developer to create apps for Meego? The simple answer is that there is no longer any point in developing for Nokia unless the apps are Windows Phone apps. All fine and dandy – but this insistence that Symbian and Meego will remain part of Nokia’s strategy is laughable. With no mass adoption of Meego devices (because the future of those handsets looks shaky at best) and Symbian dead in the water, there is no incentive for developers, so there will be new apps to go on these devices, pure and simple. And with the entire eco-system controlled by Microsoft there is little point in startups and developers paying any more attention to Nokia, beyond what hardware they bring out that might enhance a Windows Mobile app – which will of course run on other Windows devices anyway. Thus Nokia joins Samsung, Sony Ericsson etc as mainly devices makers but little else. I would be happy to be proved wrong in the comments, but that’s how it looks right now. |
null | Nicholas Deleon | 2,011 | 2 | 12 | null |
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